Quantification of decadal deforestation and afforestation scenario in Bankura District of West Bengal using geospatial techniques

Abstract

Forest degradation in terms of deforestation is the prime intimidation to forests globally which consider to be more pervasive during past few decades. Such degradation of forest has several short-term societal and long-term ecological consequences. Though National forest policy in 1988 and its subsequent addition in 2018 aimed at achieving 33% of geographical area of the country under forest and tree cover, assessment showed only 21.67% area of the country is under this category which is far less than the desired level. In West Bengal, area recorded under forest and tree cover is only 19.04% to total geographical area. Considering this, several endeavors have been undertaken though the broad vision of afforestation under several projects in the last 4 decades, but the result has been somewhat patchy. So, there is an urgent need for quantification of actual scenario of deforestation mainly by anthropogenic activities and simultaneously plantation under afforestation program to any policy implication and formulation of management plan after 1980s. Nowadays, sophisticated remote sensing and GIS techniques facilitate to quantify and asses the microlevel data of green space at pixel level under desired time phases. Present study focuses on such type of quantification of forest data extracted from satellite images in subdistrict level on 10 years basis in Bankura District of South western West Bengal between 1990 and 2019, in which the percentage of forest cover (18.68%) is less than the desired national level. Besides that, assessment of association between population forest and evaluation of plantation program under JFM is also examined. Significant outcome resulted that though in some blocks there are overall gain in forest cover in 29 years’ time frame but decadal assessment is very much pertinent to identify actual deforestation–afforestation scenario and implementation of any management plan in the district.