Measuring and mapping threats to forests: issues and opportunities with an empirical study from Bangladesh

Spatially explicit tools for prioritizing conservation and land-use in human dominated landscapes are becoming common in recent years. Such efforts are also efficient in minimizing management costs and to provide future possible scenarios to aid management decisions. We propose and develop a spatially explicit framework and novel tool - Future Forest - for simulating scenarios for future forest management actions. We integrate both forest/vegetation characteristics, selected ecosystem services provided by corresponding forest/vegetation and nineteen possible threats and/or disturbances to forests that are either anthropogenic or occurring naturally, and may influence forest/vegetation characteristics and expected outcomes from forests. Our modelling framework provides options for necessary future actions either from conservation or from production forestry perspectives, and to ensure sustainable forest management in an area. In addition to that our threat assessment and mapping tool are useful in indentifying vulnerable zone of forests to specific anthropogenic, natural or other threats, and to take precautionary actions against each identified threats. We applied our modelling framework and spatial tool for measuring and mapping threats to a Bangladesh forest, with recommended actions to ensure sustainable forest management and to spatially prioritize zones for special management needs. We finally discuss issues and opportunities that our spatially explicit framework and novel tool may offer