ANALYZING OF FOREST COVER CHANGE USING MULTI-TEMPORAL SATELLITE IMAGES IN PHNOM TAMAO ZOOLOGICAL PARK, CAMBODIA

Abstract

The results of forest cover from satellite data provide the various scales from the past periods, in particular, it’s have been conducted all over the world including Cambodia for several years. In this study, multi-temporal satellite data were used to quantify forest cover and land cover changes in the park, Ba Ti district, Takeo commune, Cambodia during 1997 - 2017. Landsat 5 data were used for 1997, 2001, 2007 and Landsat 8 images were used for 2013, 2017 with a spatial resolution of 30 m. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) in combination with unsupervised classification was used. After analyzed the results showed that there was the change from years 1997 - 2017 of forest cover change extents. Accuracy assessments of forest cover maps showed highly accurate, over 83.67%. In particular, forest cover extents increased in the period 1997 - 2017 from 1,928.7 ha to 2,162.7 ha (increased by 234 ha), for 2001 - 2007, from 1,758.06 ha to 2,065.68 ha (increased by 307.62 ha), for 2007 - 2013 from 2,065.68 ha to 2,149.2 ha (increased by 83.52 ha), for 2013 - 2017 from 2,149.2 to 2,162.7 ha (increased by 13.5 ha). Forest cover extents decreased by 1,928.49 ha to 1,758.06 ha in the period 1997 - 2001. The main drivers of forest cover extents increased due to good governance in forest conservation of Forest Administration and decreased because of human activities, such as illegal logging, land encroachment, agriculture expansion, and forest fire.