Assessment of regional changes for enhancing water availability

Abstract

Background: The land use plays a crucial role for a particular watershed along with many other identified and accepted factors. Momentarily, land cover practices are unorganised in most river basins of Nepal. The study aims at land cover classification, mapping of the changes over the last 25 years, an assessment of the accuracy for land cover classification, consolidation of the people’s perception of the ongoing work, studying trends in the temperature and precipitation pattern in the last 30 years in the area composed by 4 watersheds of the districts of Kaski and Tanahun of Chitwan Annapurna Landscape region, Nepal. Results: This research depicted that the land cover practice is changing in the areas of study. In most of the cases, the share of open broadleaved forest is higher. In case of closed broadleaved forest, it has improved in the recent years. Chhabdi Khola and Guhe Khola watersheds show an increase in overall forest cover and decrease in percentage of agricultural lands. Overall, despite changing climate, rise of temperature and declining of rainfall pattern, the vegetation cover shows an increasing tendency which may have positive effects for the water availability in the Kaski and Tanahun regions. Conclusions: The following research endeavoured to connect knowledge and people’s perception in order to understand the implications related to land use management and possibly to improve water availability for society. The investigation includes integrated land use changes, vegetation cover, climatic trends and potential of this knowledge implementation for local people, farmers, regional and national governing agencies.