PreprintArticleVersion 1This version is not peer-reviewed
Towards Sustainable Forest Management: Assessing and Predicting Landuse/cover Change on Forest Landscape and Estimating its Impact on Forest Health in Southeast Georgia, USA
Version 1
: Received: 16 September 2024 / Approved: 16 September 2024 / Online: 17 September 2024 (06:12:55 CEST)
How to cite:
Batame, M.; Kanjin, K. Towards Sustainable Forest Management: Assessing and Predicting Landuse/cover Change on Forest Landscape and Estimating its Impact on Forest Health in Southeast Georgia, USA. Preprints2024, 2024091211. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202409.1211.v1
Batame, M.; Kanjin, K. Towards Sustainable Forest Management: Assessing and Predicting Landuse/cover Change on Forest Landscape and Estimating its Impact on Forest Health in Southeast Georgia, USA. Preprints 2024, 2024091211. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202409.1211.v1
Batame, M.; Kanjin, K. Towards Sustainable Forest Management: Assessing and Predicting Landuse/cover Change on Forest Landscape and Estimating its Impact on Forest Health in Southeast Georgia, USA. Preprints2024, 2024091211. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202409.1211.v1
APA Style
Batame, M., & Kanjin, K. (2024). Towards Sustainable Forest Management: Assessing and Predicting Landuse/cover Change on Forest Landscape and Estimating its Impact on Forest Health in Southeast Georgia, USA. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202409.1211.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Batame, M. and Kingsley Kanjin. 2024 "Towards Sustainable Forest Management: Assessing and Predicting Landuse/cover Change on Forest Landscape and Estimating its Impact on Forest Health in Southeast Georgia, USA" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202409.1211.v1
Abstract
The conversion of LULC classes into other types is occurring at a faster rate globally including United States. Many studies have examined the drivers and causes of LULC changes, particularly, in northeast Georgia and Atlanta in the United States, while the case of southeast Georgia remains unstudied. Thus, this study filled the gap by quantifying and predicting the impact of LULC change on forestlands and how these LULC changes have affected forest health. The study used Landsat images, including 2005 and 2023 together with the random forest algorithm to perform LULC classification on the Google Earth Engine. Also, the study predicted how LULC will impact forest cover by 2050. The results revealed that forest hectares have generally changed approximately from 65% to 62% between 2005 and 2023, and this is projected to likely further decline to about 53% by 2050. This change in forest acreage has resulted decline in the health of the forest, that is the NDVI values changed from 0.992 to 0.866 between 2005 and 2023. The study concludes that the forest cover in southeast Georgia has changed to urban features over the years. Agriculture land is projected to gain most of the forest cover by 2050.
Keywords
Sustainable Forest Management; LULC; NDVI; Landsat Satellite; Google Earth Engine
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Remote Sensing
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
