TITLE:
Land Use/Land Cover and Forest Canopy Density Monitoring of Wafi-Golpu Project Area, Papua New Guinea
AUTHORS:
Slady Akike, Sailesh Samanta
KEYWORDS:
Remote Sensing, GIS, FCD Model, Land Use/Land Cover, Forest Land Management
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection,
Vol.4 No.8,
August
3,
2016
ABSTRACT: This
study aims to examine the use of Remote Sensing and Geographical Information
System (GIS) technology in land use/land cover mapping to aide sustainable
planning and development in the Wafi-Golpu project area. At the same time, this
study examines an existing method of Forest Canopy Density (FCD) model to
estimate forest canopy density of the proposed deforestation site, which is
known as the Advanced Exploration Feasibility Study Activities (AEFSA) area
within the Wafi-Golpu Project site. The FCD model calculates the forest canopy
density using the three (3) indices of vegetation, soil and shadow from the
Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) satellite image of year 2013. In this
study an attempt has been made to monitor the forest loss or degradation during
deforestation in a natural forest stand of the Wafi-Golpu project area using forest
FCD mapping and monitoring model and the findings of the study will assist the
project planners and developers with their work on forest rehabilitation and
reforestation for the purposes of sustainable forest management. The result of
the work shows that a considerable amount of forest loss will be undertaken
during the AEFSA deforestation exercise and also the findings show that a
reliable land use/land cover map will greatly assist sustainable development in
a resource project development period.