Forest fragmentation analysis in Dhansiri Reserve forest of Karbi Anglong, Assam

Land use/cover (LULC) change dynamics and forest fragmentation is important for monitoring the changes of an area, which helps in understanding the relation between the activities of human and environment. Landscape fragmentation has become a fundamental concern of study as it has direct implications on the ecology and land use management; most of the fragmentation that occurs is mostly due to human induced factors. This study undertakes Dhansiri reserve forest of Karbi Anglong and tries to analyze the pattern of land use/land cover changes by employing multi-temporal satellite imageries from 1976 to 2016 for a period of 40 years. To assess the forest fragmentation the Landscape fragmentation tool (LFT v2.0) was applied to map the forest fragmentation classes and to interpret the rate of fragmentation. The analysis showed that the magnitude of LULC of the area has been significantly changing and the dense forest areas have been altered into a moderately dense forest and open forest of fragmentation is higher and the health of the forest is deteriorating at a higher rate. Most reasons are due to encroachments from alongside the boundary/fringe areas of the reserve forest and built up of the new settlements and increase in population.