ISSN: 2578-4994
Authors: Him Lal Shrestha*, Anu Rai and Puspa Dhakal
The Tree Outside Forest (TOF) play important ecological, social and economic role. In Nepal, TOF are mostly used by smallholder farmers to manage their needs from the farm trees mainly for the livestock keeping and agriculture. These trees also play crucial role on combating climate change impacts. But despite its importance, the TOF have largely been ignored in the forest statistics in Nepal. To overcome this problem an assessment of the trees outside forest has been conducted in Bhimsen Rural Municipality †6 using satellite imageries and field based measurements. Using data acquired from World View Panchromatic, tree delineation was conducted with ITC technique. 9 compartment of 5km*5km grid with the division of 500*500m was assigned. The tree roundness, crown area, and length/width ratio of the trees were calculated from the satellite image. Likewise, field based measurements were conducted to quantify the tree based biomass and carbon stock and the household survey was done to estimate the annual harvest from those trees. In the nine compartments made for image analysis, the Trees Outside Forest count was found to be a total of 31520 with an average of 2700 trees per hectare. A total of 118.4 tons/ha of biomass and 55.6 tons/ha carbon is stored on TOF in the study area. Hence, we recommend that the contribution from the Trees outside Forest be accounted into the national carbon statistics.
Keywords: Tree Outside Forest; Farm trees; GIS; Satellite Imageries; Image Segmentation; Carbon Sequestration; Biomass
