Integrated Remote Sensing and GIS Based Approach for Sustainable Development of Khirthar National Park

Abstract

The sustainable management and planning for the conservation of National Park is extremely important and to assess the changes in National Park’s biodiversity, natural eco-system and ground surface features by gathering larger area information through integrated remote sensing and GIS techniques. Multi-Spectral remotely sensed satellite data has been implemented in this study to assess change in Khirthar National Park where human influence is slowly increasing due to which agriculture is also expanding and will ultimately restrict the accommodations of wildlife and remove the rare natural vegetation species in National Park. This research study carried filed survey, analyzes the vegetation change using NIR and RED band of Land sat imagery to calculate the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)and extracted the Land Surface Temperature (LST) using thermal band to define variations in climate at Khirthar National Park (KNP). NDVI and LST was calculated to assess decadal change at KNP by acquiring satellite images of Land sat 5 TM (1992, 2000 and 2010) and Lands at 8 OLI&TIRS (2018).The results of this research study and field survey revealed that NDVI and LST has been increased during study period, the high NDVI values of 1992, 2001, 2010 and 2018 results were 0.31, 0.38, 0.42 and 0.45. The high temperature during the study time span results of 1992, 2001, 2010 and 2018 were 49oC, 47.5oC, 51oC and 56oC. This increase of vegetation is not just because of the natural vegetation but it is mainly due to increase of agriculture. Therefore the sustainable management is highly recommended for such natural heritage to prevent further loss of biodiversity and natural eco-system.