Deforestation and forest degradation are the major ecological problems in developing countries. It is a dynamic process which can be attributed to various socioeconomic and biophysical factors, resulting in the conversion of forest area into a mosaic of mature forest fragments, pasture and degraded habitat.
In this research, a multi-agent analysis of social and economic complexity of deforestation was developed for Nepal at two different scales. We offered the temporal analysis of forest changes, people’s livelihood and forest dependency at local scale, and the spatio-temporal extent of various proximate and underlying causes of forest changes at regional scale in an attempt to explore the socioeconomic perspective of deforestation and forest degradation in Nepal. At local scale, we quantified the major forest types and forest cover changes in Chitwan distict, where except for riverine forest, forest areas of all other forest types were reduced. Terai Shorea robusta forest, which has high commercial value, showed a loss of 23% between 1976 and 1989, and an overall forest cover loss of 15% between 1976 and 2001. An artificial neural network predicted in five classes of forest canopy density using Landsat image of 2001 with overall accuracy of 82%.
A household survey in Chitwan revealed that 82% of all households still collected firewood and 81% gathered fodder from the forest and 42% of all households used forest fringe for grazing. The Forest Product Availability Index showed a sharp decline from 0.781 to 0.360. Timber wood was noticeably lower than the other forest products. These findings showed people’s high forest dependency in the district. These support the hypothesis that forest land has been excessively converted to farm land, or the forests resources were heavily extracted in the past. Similarly, population factors, growth of arable land and food insufficiency could be a main cause of high forest degradation and deforestation in Terai. Pearson’s correlation coefficient significantly showed (r = - 0.750 and r = - 0.788, p = 0.01) a negative association between population and forest area loss for 1958 and 1978 respectively. Moreover, pressure on forest significantly increased from about 2.4 people/ha to 17 people/ha during the same period. Similarly, forest area lost and growth in arable land showed a strong negative correlation association significance (r = -.745, p = 0.01) between 1958 and 1996 while association negatively correlated and significance (r = -.485, p = 0.05) for 1958-2001. Further, forest area and food insufficiency in 2001 in Terai showed also a strong negative association with significance of correlation coefficient (r = - .492, p = 0.05).
Landuse/land cover analysis of the whole Terai region showed that agricultural land increased by 542,481 ha (47%) in 2001 from 1,150,196 ha in 1963/64. Area covered by food crop increased by 19% in between 1986/87-2005/06. There was an increase of 104,800 ha of crop land and a decrease of 71,600 ha of wood and forest land between 1991/92-2001/02. Food security results based on Food Supply to Demand Ratio showed that more than half of the districts were classified under potentially food secured and unsecured category. Seven districts out of 20 had food deficit of 8-16 times during the study periods. The productivity of major food crop was not promising and below the production potential. About 60% of holdings found to be unable to survive from their own agriculture production. This indicated that Terai was also not a food secure region considering 20% excess food production for unforeseen food shock.
We integrated GIS, RS and socioeconomic data and recognized a wide variety of factors impacting on forest conditions. The integration of socioeconomic data in GIS and RS was capable of mapping and analyzing complicated relations between socioeconomic and biophysical forest parameters. The perspective presented in this study was promising in that these applications and demonstration of socioeconomic data could be a useful indicator in forest management processes. There are significant differences in socioeconomic structures, forest resources, and historical processes in the use and management of forest resources between the districts as Nepal shows a diverse topography and socioeconomic differences.
Therefore, further studies on forest resource monitoring integrated with better understanding of socioeconomic factors considering the location specific problem is needed in Terai to sustain the tropical forest management system. These results suggest that some of the agent's behaviors and forest management plans should change to promote sustainability of the forest reserve such as broadening government's role to improve management plans and monitoring, and to prevent encroachment of forest land by improving living conditions of potential settlers outside the forest. In addition, other alternatives for instance changes in temporal interdependency could be potential research field to be explored in future work.
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