Assessment of the land use land cover change in the forest corridor of Lamahi bottleneck area of Terai Arc landscape Nepal
Student name: Mr Ram Bichari Thakur
Guide: Dr P K Joshi
Year of completion: 2012
Host Organisation: Mid-Western Regional Forest Directorate, Birendranagar, Surkhet, Nepal
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Mr Bishwa Nath Oli
Abstract: Terai Arc Landscape (TAL) Nepal stretches in Terai region between Bagmati River of Nepal and
Yamuna river of India linking with eleven protected areas of Nepal and India. Due to intense
anthropocentric activities in this landscape, highly dense contiguous forest has converted into
many fragments (patches). There are some critical forests corridors for wildlife to move freely,
are commonly referred as bottleneck areas. One such bottleneck areas named as Lamahi forest
corridor encompasses five Village Development Committees (VDCs). The study was aimed to
find out changes in land use land cover (LULC) between 1990, 1999 and 2011, and to explore
the linkage between anthropocentric disturbances and structure and composition of vegetation,
and also to investigate perception of local people towards landscape management issues in
Lamahi forest corridor. Landsat imageries of 1990, 1999 and 2011 were extracted and analysed
for LULC change analysis. Eight major LULC classes were classified.
Forest coverage was 67.24% in 1990, 61% in 1999 and 66% in 2011. This shows once depleted
forest cover has been continuously recovering in Lamahi forest corridor since 1990. Forest
degradation was more in 1990 since Sal degraded forest was 35%, Sal mixed forest was 14%
and Sal dominant forest was 18% in 1990 compared to only 15.2% Sal degraded forest in 1999
and 2011. Forest restoration commenced since 1990 through initiation of community forestry
development program in Nepal as Sal mixed forest and Sal dominant forest was 32.8% and 13%
respectively in 1999 and, they were 22.4% and 28.9% respectively in 2011.
Shannon diversity index of vegetation structure increases at 2 km and decreases both at 1 km and
3 km from the settlement. This result follows intermediate disturbance hypothesis. As the distance
from settlement increases, coverage of tree increases but the coverage of herbs and shrubs
decreases.Local people perceive the incidence of forest fire, wild animals' road accident,
importance of forest corridor and wildlife conservation differently.
Key words: forest corridor, Land use land cover change, Structure & composition of vegetation
etc.
