Detecting and assessing forest degradation assisted by remote sensing

Increasing anthropogenic pressure on forest land such as land cover changes, water and soil pollution, degradation of canopy and soil quality and losses in biological diversity are some important threat to the productivity of forest ecosystem. Most forests resources are exploited for economic and social activities. However, forest degradation has become a key issue in line with the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) mechanism. Deforestation is the permanent removal of forests and withdrawal of land from forest use, whereas forest degradation refers to negative changes in the forest area that limit its production capacity. This paper presents the potential application of remote sensing for detecting, assessing and monitoring forest degradation. Advances in the spatial and spectral resolutions of sensors are available for forest managers to study forest degradation and certain aspects of biological diversity through direct remote sensing. Monitoring the changes in natural forest cover at global and regional scale can contribute to reducing the uncertainties in estimating emissions of greenhouse gases from degraded forest land. In addition, remote sensing coupled with GIS are as a potential tool, for monitoring mainly by identifying the degraded forest land for rehabilitation program, conservation priorities and quantification of overall forest cover loss at finer scale. The data processed from remotely sensed data enable forest managers to assess degraded forest areas. Thus, the degraded areas need to be rehabilitated and a proper planning should be designed and carried out in those areas. Nowadays, reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation has gained acceptance by many countries as an approach for mitigating climate change. Modelling deforestation and degradation is a key point to solve some problems related to environmental problems and understand the drivers, rate and patterns of forest.