Effects of Ecotourism on Land Use Land Cover Dynamics: A Study from Shivapuri Watershed

Abstract

The ecotourism activities have been affecting the land cover and land use of the Shivpuri watershed, but assessment was not done before to show the dynamics. Thus, this study was objectively done to assess status and Land Use and Land Cover Change between 1999 and 2016, identify to status of ecotourism, major ecotourism sites and activities and trend of tourists in Shivapuri watershed. The Landsat ETM+ satellite image of November 1999 and OLI 2016 were downloaded from USGS website. Shivapur watershed site was clipped using ERDAS. Next, the image was classified using supervised maximum likelihood algorithm to produce the thematic map. In addition, altogether 216 and 233 training samples collected from the field observation and were used for accuracy assessment of classified maps of 1999 and 2016 respectively. The result showed that thematic map of 1999 and 2016. The map of 1999 showed that the main land cover was forest cover around 2514 ha followed by Agriculture land 355 ha. Similarly, classified map of 2016 showed that forest cover was 2404 ha. The difference in land use land cover was -110, -106, 198 and 18 ha in forest cover, agriculture, degraded forest and settlement respectively. The identified ecotourism activities were Jungle drive, trekking, hiking, bicycling, videography, wildlife viewing and bird watching. The effects of ecotourism on land use land cover dynamics were more towards the northeast part of the watershed. There were only10850 visitors (7450 Nepali and 3400 foreigners) in 1994/1995 which reached 209717 (193178 Nepali and 16539 foreigners) in 2016/2017. This research will be useful to assess the dynamics of land cover and land use and their real reason. Keywords: