forest cover study, intro

forest cover study, intro

In the various scientific and land management applications, forest cover has always been the primary focus of study and observation. The different attributes of forest cover or vegetation such as vegetation species’ identity, pathogens, volume, included fauna, and even anthropogenic factors are the commonly being used to assess forest conditions. Alongside the advancement in the techniques developed for forest studies, is the realization of forest vegetation density as an essential tool for further assessing forest conditions.
Forests conditions today clearly show the suffering it has experienced from indiscriminate logging and other unsustainable use in the past, as shown by the more than 800,000 hectares of forestland depleted only between 1990 and 2000. Among the various forms of forestland depletion are kaingin and land use conversion, which certainly entail decrease in forestland area, and ultimately the forests capability to continuously provide its amenities. However, it should be noted that forests can also be degraded without forest area being diminished. This case happens when plant and tree density in a forest land decreases.
Forest vegetation and canopy density then becomes a potent tool for assessing the forest status, other than the traditional tallying of the land area covered by forests. FCD can also be considered as such because of its being intimately related to the problems arising if ever there were problems due to factors such as soil erosion, biodiversity loss, climate change, and even those anthropogenic in nature. The statement of FCD’s importance according to Tiwari, 2006 in the paper entitled Forest Canopy Density Mapping of Doon Valley using Biophysical Response Modeling on MODIS data is that:
…Many studies performed earlier, show that canopy gaps widen due to fall of trees or branches. Some other activities like exploitation of natural resource, urbanization, increasing population, grazing etc also affects, which in turn...