An Assessment of Land Use and Land Cover Change in
Parsa National Park by using GIS and Remote Sensing
Sujan Khanal1*, Om Prakash Kalwar2, Babu Ram Lamichhane3, Navin Kumar Yadav4
1Institute of Forestry, Pokhara Campus
2Department of Watershed and environmental Science, Institute of forestry, Hetauda Campus
3National Trust for Nature Conservation, Biodiversity Conservation Center
4International Center for Integrated Mountain Development
*Crosspondending author: info.sujankhanal@gmail.com
Abstract
This research was conducted to find out changes in
Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) between 1991 and
2016 and to assess the driving forces responsible
for LULC change in Parsa National Park. Household
survey, GPS points and direct field observation were
carried out to collect the socioeconomic and forest,
Lower vegetation, water body and Sand/Gravel were
differentiated. GPS locations were used as training
sample for supervised classification and Ground
verification was done with Google Earth, along with
questionnaire survey. From the GIS analysis, obtained
result showed that forest, and sand/Gravel increased
by 0.0662%. 3.24%. Respectively whereas Lower
Vegetation decreased by 0.9834% and Water Body
decrease by 2.006% from year 1991 to 2016. Forest
cover has increased mostly at the expense of Lower
vegetation. Reported key drivers responsible for Land
cover change were formation of community forest,
increase in awareness among people, low dependency
on forest products, human population change, pond
restoration, control biophysical data. Supervised
classification (Maximum likelihood algorithm) was
used to prepare land use/cover maps and four
main categories of invasive species, infrastructures
developments like high voltage electric transmission
line, newly constructed road from Saharanpur to
Charhabhaiwaya increase in encroachment.
KEY WORDS: Landuse/Landcover, GIS and Remote
Sensing, Land use change, Supervised Classification.
1. Introduction
Land holds a central position in human existence and
development (Briassoulis, 2000). Studies have also
shown that there remain only few landscapes on the
Earth that is still in their natural states. Anthropogenic
activities have altered the earth's surface significantly
and are associated with profound impact upon the
natural environment. This has resulted an observable
pattern of change in context of land use/land cover
over time. These changes have at times beneficial,
at times detrimental impacts and effects (Briassoulis,
2009) the latter being the chief causes of concern
as they impinge variously on human well-being and
welfare (Turner II et. al., 2007; Gonzales, 2009).
Land use/Land cover changes are so pervasive that,
when aggregated globally, they significantly affect the
key aspect of earth system functioning. They directly
88 International (SAARC) Youth Scientific Conference (IYSC) on Science and Technology for Prosperity:
impact biotic diversity world-wide (Sala et al., 2000);
contribute to local regional climate change. Thus, land
use/cover change has become a central component
in current strategies for managing natural resource
and monitoring environmental changes (Tiwari and
Saxena, 2011). Information of land use/cover and
possibilities of their optimal use is essential for the
selection, planning and implementation of the land use
schemes to meet the increasing human needs and
welfare. There are various methods that can be used in
the collection, analysis and presentation of resources
data but the use of remote sensing and geographic
information system (RS/GIS) technologies can greatly
facilitate the process (Gautam, 2007).
Remote sensing along with GIS and Global Positioning
System (GPS) helps in maintaining up-to-date land use
dynamics information for a sound planning and a cost-
effective decision (Rickets, 1992). One of the widely
used methods to determine the temporal dynamics of
land use is the analysis of satellite images covering
the same area acquired on different dates (Mulders,
2001). Satellite remote sensing data has been used in
Nepal since past two decades in specified areas and
its importance is increasing (Sharma, 2002). Change
information of the Earth’s surfaces is becoming more
and more important in monitoring of the local, regional
and global environment. The present study, conducted
in Parsa National Park located in Parsa district aims at
analyzing the condition of the Reserve with the help of
land use/land cover extracted from the multi temporal
remote sensing data in a GIS environment as well as
identifying driving forces responsible for these land
use and land cover changes.
2. Study Area
The Parsa National Park (PNP) lies between Chitwan
National Park (CNP) and the Mahabharat Range
within the Terai Arc Landscape of Nepal (Figure 1).
It is located between 27°33'30" to 27°44'30" North
Latitude and 84°22'30" to 84°34'00" East Longitude in
central part of Parsa District, Narayani Zone of Central
Development Region, Nepal and covers an area of
683.863 ha. Politically, it extends over three districts;
namely: Bara, Parsa and Makawanpur. It has been
gazette as a National park to preserve the habitat for
wild Asian elephant and a variety of other fauna.  It is
contiguous with Chitwan National Park in the west. In
2017 it was gazette as National Park.
 www.glovis.usgs.gov. They were Landsat Thematic
Mapper (TM) and Operational Land Imagery (OLI) as
shown in Table 1.
Table 1: Landsat Images used for Land use/cover
Classification

Satellite No.of Date of Cloud

Images bands Acquired cover (%)

Landsat TM 1-7 1991-12-08 0

Landsat OLI 1-11 2016-11-10 1.8
3.1.3 Training Samples
GPS points for training sample and validation of
classification were collected from field. Stratified
Random Sampling technique was employed to collect
GPS points and the number of GPS points taken was
proportional to the each land use/land cover classes
area.
Table 2 : Table Showing Training samples and
Validation Points

Year Training Validation Total points

3.1 Data Collection
3.1.1 Household Survey
To decipher the real condition of BFC, related to land
use change, forest encroachment and population
pressure on forest resources, household survey was
conducted. Number of households from each VDC
and VDC's were selected randomly on the basis of
their coverage around the forest BufferZone. i.e. 35
respondents were selected randomly from Amlekhgunj
Buffer Zone Community Forest, followed by 25 from
Amlekhgunj V.D.C. ward number 3, 4, 5 and 6 was
chosen in Bara district and Nirmal Basti V.D.C. ward
number 6 was chosen in Parsa district.
Figure 1-Map of study area
3.1.2 Satellite Images
Two temporal Landsat images were downloaded from
Sample points Points
1991 185 78 263
2016 190 81 271
Out of the total sample points, 70% were used as
training samples and rest were used as validation
points.
3.2 Land use/Land cover classification
Supervised classification (Maximum Likelihood
Algorithm) was performed to classify the images into
different land use/cover classes. Land use/cover was
classified to the following 4 classes:
1. Forest
2. Lower Vegetation
3. Water body
4. Gravel/Sand
3.3 Change detection and analysis
The classified images prepared in ERDAS IMAGINE
2014 of two different dates were reclassified in Arc
GIS 10.2.2 and processed through raster calculator
to produce LULC change maps showing "From-to"
change in land use/land cover between 1991 and
2016.The numerical analysis of land use dynamics
was then done through Microsoft Excel 2010.
3.4 Social data Analysis
The analysis and interpretation of different aspects
of social data were performed using Microsoft Excel
2010.
4. Results and Discussions
4.1 Land cover Mapping and classification
The classification of the Landsat TM 1991 scene
showed that forest was the major land use covering
548.379 followed by Lower Vegetation 99.58 Water
body 19.358 and Gravel/Sand 16.537 respectively

"Connecting Lives with Land, Water and Environment" 5-6 June, 2019, Kathmandu, Nepal 89
 shown in Figure 3. Lower
Vegeta- 99.58 77.847 21.733 0.86932 -0.9834
tion
Water
19.358 11.664 7.694 0.30776 -2.006
Bodies
Gravel/
16.537 36.78 -20.251 -0.81004 3.24
Sand

Figure 3: Classified map of study area in 1991

Similarly, the Landsat OLI 2016 image showed that
forest was the major land use with 557.563 followed
by Lower Vegetation Water body 11.664, and Gravel/
Sand 36.78 respectively (Figure 4).
The above table shows that the forest area increased
from 548.379 Sq.Km in 1991 to 557.563 Sq.Km in 2016
i.e. 9.184 Sq.Km forest increased. Likewise Lower
Vegetation decreased from 99.58Sq.Km. to 77.847
Sq.Km i.e. 21.733 Sq.Km in last 25 years while Water
Bodies area decreased from 19.358 Sq.Km to 11.664
i.e. 7.694 Sq.Km cultivated land decreased meanwhile.
In the same way, sand/gravel area increased from
16.537Sq.Km to 36.78 Sq.Km. This result concludes
that major Landuse/Land cover change in the study
area was change in Lower Vegetation followed by
Gravel/Sand. It also indicates the forest as a prominent
land cover at present scenario followed by cultivated
land.
Table 3 represents the area of each land use/cover
category of the two different years
(1991 and 2016) and four different classes.
Table 3: Area statistics of Parsa national Park, Year
1991&2016
Total Dif- Annual
Class 1991 2016 ference Change
(Sq.Km) (Sq.km)
Figure 4: Classified map of the study area in 2016
4.2 Land use/cover Dynamics
The Table 4 and Figure 5 below highlight the dynamics
on land use/cover change in the Parsa national Park
within the period of 25 years. It is found that total
282.69, and 89.37 (1149.21 ha of Lower vegetation,
18.45 ha of water body and 205.2 ha of others) of land
area had converted into forest area from other land
use/cover over 25 years. Likewise, 1090.8 ha (9.63%)
of the forest area had converted into other (478.89
ha to Lower vegetation, 44.55 ha to water body and
567.36 ha to others) land use/cover types. The
result obtained from GIS Mapping reveals that Lower
vegetation (1149.21ha) had converted to forest than
the other land use/cover type. Gautam et al., 2002
also observed the increase in forest cover mostly from
Rate of the Lower vegetation on their study on Upper Rosi
change Watershed of the Middle Mountain Region of Nepal.
%

Forest 548.379 557.563 -9.184 -0.36736 0.0662 Figure 5: The LULC change map of the study area

90 International (SAARC) Youth Scientific Conference (IYSC) on Science and Technology for Prosperity:
between 1991 and 2016
Table 5: Accuracy Assessment of Classification
Year Overall Accuracy Kappa Statistic
1991 90.87% 0.877
2016 91.96% 0.892
The result in Table 5 above indicate that the
performance of classification methodology is quite
good, reaching an overall accuracy of 90.87% and
91.96% for the 1991 and 2016 images respectively
and overall Kappa Statistics of 0.877 and 0.892 for
both images. Both the accuracy assessments indicate
high Cohen's Kappa values which are close to 1.
The forest area, Lower vegetation, water body and
Sand/gravel were found to have increased annually by
the rate of 0.14 percent, 2.23 percent and 2.85 percent
respectively. On the other hand Lower vegetation was
found to have gone down by 2.91 percent per annum.
Table 6: Rate of land use/cover change between
years 1991-2016
Land use/cover Rate of change (%)
Forest 0.0662
Lower Vegetation -0.9834
Water body -2.006
Sand/Gravel 3.24
Rate of change (%) = (FAO, 2000)
Where, a1 = base year data, a2 = end year data, n =
number of years
5. Social characteristics of Respondents
Total 124 households were selected for household
survey based on purposive random sampling. Among
the total respondents, 5 percent were female and
95 percent were male. Ethnically 37 percent were
Brahmin, 29 percent were Chhetri, 13 percent were
Tharus, 6 percent were Newar, 4 percent were B.K, 2
percent were Tamang, 1 percent was Sunar, 3 percent
were Gurung and 5 percent were others. Agriculture
was found as primary occupation, 60 percent
respondents were involved in agriculture followed
by 17 percent were involved in Business, 11 percent
were involved in government service, 7 percent were
involved in Labor and 5 percent in foreign activities.
73 percent of respondents were found to be literate
whereas 27 percent were illiterate.
6. Land use/cover change and driving factors
A host of factors are collectively impacting upon the
forestry sector, triggering planned and unplanned
Changes. The sustainability of the forest products and
services depends on a number of factors that may.
Bring about changes in forestry sector of Nepal by
"Connecting Lives with Land, Water and Environment" 5-6 June, 2019, Kathmandu, Nepal
2020. Some of the key drivers impacting directly and
indirectly.
Indirectly on forestry are described below
Political and institutional environment
Demographic change
Economic Changes
Societal changes
Globalization
Ecological and environmental concerns
Technological change
Conservation Implications
There is a need to support successional indicators
while controlling degradation indicators. Increasing
the level of protection especially invulnerable areas
should be a priority for conservation. Increasing the
pace of planting of indigenous species in abandoned
plantations could considerably enhance the positive
land cover changes. At the same time, it is essential to
reduce the livelihood over-dependence of people from
outside and inside the Reserve on forest. Small scale
encroachments and agriculture expansion should be
prevented. Sustainable infrastructure development by
different government agencies should be coordinated
and monitored by a single nodal agency. Similarly
there is rapid increase in the expansion of river bank,
So Proper management Plan should be made to stop
this expansion.
7. Conclusion
Land cover change assessment for a period of 25
years helped to identify the rates and characteristics of
land cover transformations. Two major and divergent
trends, degradation and successional, were observed
in the study. The degradation trend was indicated by
the transformation of undisturbed forest to disturbed
forest and other non-forest categories. These changes
can be attributed to a number of causes, Succession,
and uncoordinated policies of the different government
agencies. The positive successional changes resulting
from protection of the area showed the resilience
of the system even after prolonged disturbances
on vegetation cover. The observed degradation
transitions exceed the rates of successional changes.
Hence, the Reserve appears susceptible to continuing
disturbances under the current management
regime; however, the impacts of such processes are
substantially lower than in surrounding unprotected
areas. The land use / land cover classification provides
the area under each class, could be an essential tool
for ecological modeling, proper management of the
resources. Also the estimate of forest cover assessed in
study, would enables Conservational officer to develop
good conservation strategies in order to conserve the
forest, if there is any loss of the forest cover.
8. Acknowledgements
This paper is based on a part of the author's B.Sc.
Forestry Research paper submitted to the Institute
91
 of Forestry, Hetauda Campus, Nepal. We are
thankful to NTNC, Chitwan for providing financial and
technical support to conduct the study. We express
our coordinal thanks to Mr. Anish Joshi, Mr. Santosh
Bhattarai and Mr. Dikshya Dixit Lamichhane for their
critical suggestions during the study. Similarly, all
the respondents living around Parsa National Park
are also duly acknowledged for their cooperation in
accomplishing the study.

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