Underlying factors of deforestation and its effects in Sanger Valley District Swat | Biodiversity | Agriculture

Deforestation is the removal, clearing or cutting of trees, stand or forest where the land is thereafter converted to the non-forest use. The lands conversions in study area are mostly to farm, agriculture or urban use. The study area was Sangar valley of District Swat. The region is mostly temperate region and enriched by species like Pinus willichina which needs proper documentation and information. The study area is mostly effected by manmade activities like deforestation of precious tree species therefore questionnaire based survey was conducted which contain all the information about the area, trees, cutting, fuel wood consumption, forest degradation and its effects and random questions were asked from local inhabitants. Forest field survey, focus group discussion and semi-structured interviews with 100 respondents was conducted for data collection. The study helped to find out the hidden mafia behind the illegal offence and lumbering activity. Stopping deforestation in the study area can control the loss of biodiversity, provide home to thousands of people and provide irreplaceable ecosystem like cultural and economic functions. Data was analyzed by percentage, frequency and simple fraction formula and Chi square test is applied on data for statistical analysis. Landsat 5 TM scenes and Landsat-8 processing were compared and Normalized difference vegetation index was examined through Arc GIS. The whole degree of the Sangar Valley were acquired from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Explorer database (USGS, 2013a). All scenes were geo-referenced (UTM, WGS84) and were remedied to USGS “Standard Terrain Correction (Level 1T)” (USGS, 2013b).Omar Jibran Khan, Bilal Muhammad, Tahir Ali, Saifullah, Murtaza Ali. Underlying factors of deforestation and its effects in Sanger Valley District Swat. J. Bio. Env. Sci. 15(5), 14-28, November 2019. https://innspub.net/jbes/underlying-factors-deforestation-effects-sanger-valley-district-swat