Forest Biomass and Land Cover Change Assessment of the Margalla Hills National Park in Pakistan Using a Remote Sensing Based Approach

Climate change is one of the greatest threats recently, of which the developing countries are facing most of the brunt. In the fight against climate change, forests can play an important role, since they hold a substantial amount of terrestrial carbon and can therefore affect the global carbon cycle. Forests are also an essential source of livelihood for a remarkably high proportion of people worldwide and a harbor for rich global biodiversity. Forests are however facing high deforestation rates. Deforestation is regarded as the most widespread process of land cover change (LCC), which is the conversion of one land cover type to the other land cover type. Most of this deforestation occurs in developing countries. Agricultural expansion has been reported as the most significant widespread driver of deforestation in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This deforestation is altering the balance of forest carbon stocks and threatening biodiversity. Pakistan is also a low forest cover country and faces high deforestation rates at the same time, due to the high reliance of local communities on forests. Moreover, it is also the most adversely affected by climate change. Agricultural expansion and population growth have been regarded as the most common drivers of deforestation in Pakistan. Financial incentives such as ‘Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, and the Role of Conservation of Forest Carbon, Sustainable Management of Forests and Enhancement of Forest Carbon Stocks’ (REDD+) offer hope for developing countries for not only halting deforestation but also alleviating poverty. However, such initiatives require the estimation of biomass and carbon stocks of the forest ecosystems. Therefore, it becomes necessary that the biomass and carbon potentials of the forests are explored, as well as the LCCs are investigated for identifying the deforestation and forest degradation hit areas. Based on the aforementioned, the following research objectives/sub-objectives were investigated in the MHNP, which is adjoined with the capital city of Pakistan, Islamabad; A) Forest Biomass and Carbon Stock Assessment of Margalla Hills National Park (MHNP) A.1) Aboveground Biomass (AGB) and Aboveground Carbon (AGC) assessment of the Subtropical Chir Pine Forest (SCPF) and Subtropical Broadleaved Evergreen Forest (SBEF) using Field Inventorying Techniques A.2) Exploring linear regression relationship between Sentinel-1 (S1) and Sentinel-2 (S2) satellite data with the AGB of SCPF and SBEF A.3) AGB estimation combining remote sensing and machine learning approach B) LC Classification and Land Cover Change Detection (LCCD) of MHNP for the time-period between 1999 and 2019 B.1) LC Classification for the years 1999, 2009 and 2019 using Machine Learning Algorithm B.2) LCCD of MHNP between 1999 to 2019