IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jlands/v9y2020i9p282-d401623.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Exploring Forest Change Spatial Patterns in Papua New Guinea: A Pilot Study in the Bumbu River Basin

Author

Listed:
  • Willie Doaemo

    (Department of Civil Engineering, Papua New Guinea University of Technology, Lae 00411, Papua New Guinea
    Morobe Development Foundation, Doyle Street, Trish Avenue-Eriku, Lae 00411, Papua New Guinea)

  • Midhun Mohan

    (Department of Geography, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
    UN Volunteering Program, Morobe Development Foundation, Lae 00411, Papua New Guinea)

  • Esmaeel Adrah

    (UN Volunteering Program, Morobe Development Foundation, Lae 00411, Papua New Guinea)

  • Shruthi Srinivasan

    (Department of Forest Analytics, Texas A&M Forest Service, Dallas, TX 75252, USA)

  • Ana Paula Dalla Corte

    (Department of Forest Engineering, Federal University of Paraná—UFPR, Curitiba, PR 80.210-170, Brazil)

Abstract

Papua New Guinea is a country in Oceania that hosts unique rain forests and forest ecosystems which are crucial for sequestering atmospheric carbon, conserving biodiversity, supporting the livelihood of indigenous people, and underpinning the timber market of the country. As a result of urban sprawl, agricultural expansion, and illegal logging, there has been a tremendous increase in land-use land cover (LULC) change happening in the country in the past few decades and this has triggered massive deforestation and forest degradation. However, only a few studies have ventured into quantifying the long-term trends and their associated spatial patterns—and have often presented contrasting responses. Herein, we intended to assess the extent of deforestation and the rate of urbanization that happened in the past 33 years (1987–2020) in the Bumbu river basin in Papua New Guinea using satellite imagery—for the years 1987, 2002, 2010, and 2020—and Geographic Information System (GIS) tools. On performing image classification, land use maps were developed and later compared with Google Earth’s high-resolution satellite images for accuracy assessment purposes. For probing into the spatial aspects of the land-use change issues, the study area was divided into four urban zones and four forest zones according to the four main cardinal directions centered in the urban and forest area centers of the 1987 image; subsequently, the rate of urban area expansion in each urban zone was separately calculated. From our preliminary analysis and literature survey, we observed several hurdles regarding the classification of regenerative forests and mixed pixels and gaps in LULC studies that have happened in Papua New Guinea to date. Through this communication paper, we aim to disseminate our preliminary results, which highlight a rapid increase in urban extent from 14.39 km 2 in 1987 to 23.06 km 2 in 2020 accompanied by a considerable decrease in forest extent from 76.29 km 2 in 1987 to 59.43 km 2 in 2020; this observation favors the presumption that urban and agricultural land expansion is happening at the cost of forest cover. Moreover, strategies for addressing technical issues and for integrating land-use change with various socioeconomic and environmental variables are presented soliciting feedback.

Suggested Citation

  • Willie Doaemo & Midhun Mohan & Esmaeel Adrah & Shruthi Srinivasan & Ana Paula Dalla Corte, 2020. "Exploring Forest Change Spatial Patterns in Papua New Guinea: A Pilot Study in the Bumbu River Basin," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(9), pages 1-18, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:9:y:2020:i:9:p:282-:d:401623
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/9/9/282/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/9/9/282/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eugenia Kalnay & Ming Cai, 2003. "Impact of urbanization and land-use change on climate," Nature, Nature, vol. 423(6939), pages 528-531, May.
    2. Tong Wang & Jan Kazak & Qi Han & Bauke de Vries, 2019. "A framework for path-dependent industrial land transition analysis using vector data," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(7), pages 1391-1412, July.
    3. Nelson, Gerald C. & Geoghegan, Jacqueline, 2002. "Deforestation and land use change: sparse data environments," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 201-216, November.
    4. Gabriel Popkin, 2016. "Satellite alerts track deforestation in real time," Nature, Nature, vol. 530(7591), pages 392-393, February.
    5. Rahel Hamad & Kamal Kolo & Heiko Balzter, 2018. "Post-War Land Cover Changes and Fragmentation in Halgurd Sakran National Park (HSNP), Kurdistan Region of Iraq," Land, MDPI, vol. 7(1), pages 1-17, March.
    6. Nicola Clerici & Cesar Augusto Valbuena Calderón & Juan Manuel Posada, 2017. "Fusion of Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-2A data for land cover mapping: a case study in the lower Magdalena region, Colombia," Journal of Maps, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(2), pages 718-726, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ioannis Manakos & Garik Gutman & Chariton Kalaitzidis, 2021. "Monitoring Land Cover Change: Towards Sustainability," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-2, December.
    2. Willie Doaemo & Sahil Dhiman & Alexander Borovskis & Wenlan Zhang & Sumedha Bhat & Srishti Jaipuria & Mirzi Betasolo, 2021. "Assessment of municipal solid waste management system in Lae City, Papua New Guinea in the context of sustainable development," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 23(12), pages 18509-18539, December.
    3. Mohamed Ali Mohamed, 2021. "An Assessment of Forest Cover Change and Its Driving Forces in the Syrian Coastal Region during a Period of Conflict, 2010 to 2020," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-25, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Guste Metrikaityte & Jurate Suziedelyte Visockiene & Kestutis Papsys, 2022. "Digital Mapping of Land Cover Changes Using the Fusion of SAR and MSI Satellite Data," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-20, July.
    2. Xiaoqing Lin & Chunyan Lu & Kaishan Song & Ying Su & Yifan Lei & Lianxiu Zhong & Yibin Gao, 2020. "Analysis of Coupling Coordination Variance between Urbanization Quality and Eco-Environment Pressure: A Case Study of the West Taiwan Strait Urban Agglomeration, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-19, March.
    3. Yang, Yuanyuan & Bao, Wenkai & Liu, Yansui, 2020. "Scenario simulation of land system change in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    4. Ahmed, Khalid, 2015. "The sheer scale of China’s urban renewal and CO2 emissions: Multiple structural breaks, long-run relationship and short-run dynamics," MPRA Paper 71035, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Anne A. Gharaibeh & Esra’a M. Al.Zu’bi & Lama B. Abuhassan, 2019. "Amman ( City of Waters ); Policy, Land Use, and Character Changes," Land, MDPI, vol. 8(12), pages 1-25, December.
    6. KURKALOVA, Lyubov A. & WADE, Tara R., 2013. "Aggregated Choice Data And Logit Models: Application To Environmental Benign Practices Of Conservation Tillage By Farmers In The State Of Iowa," Applied Econometrics and International Development, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 13(2), pages 119-128.
    7. Boudewijn van Leeuwen & Zalán Tobak & Ferenc Kovács, 2020. "Sentinel-1 and -2 Based near Real Time Inland Excess Water Mapping for Optimized Water Management," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-21, April.
    8. Isaac Sarfo & Bi Shuoben & Li Beibei & Solomon Obiri Yeboah Amankwah & Emmanuel Yeboah & John Ernest Koku & Edward Kweku Nunoo & Clement Kwang, 2022. "Spatiotemporal development of land use systems, influences and climate variability in Southwestern Ghana (1970–2020)," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 24(8), pages 9851-9883, August.
    9. Kere, Eric Nazindigouba & Choumert, Johanna & Combes Motel, Pascale & Combes, Jean Louis & Santoni, Olivier & Schwartz, Sonia, 2017. "Addressing Contextual and Location Biases in the Assessment of Protected Areas Effectiveness on Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazônia," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 148-158.
    10. Xinyao Li & Lingzhi Wang & Bryan Pijanowski & Lingpeng Pan & Hichem Omrani & Anqi Liang & Yi Qu, 2022. "The Spatio-Temporal Pattern and Transition Mode of Recessive Cultivated Land Use Morphology in the Huaibei Region of the Jiangsu Province," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(11), pages 1-16, November.
    11. Wu, Yu & Sills, Erin O., 2018. "The Evolving Relationship between Market Access and Deforestation on the Amazon Frontier," 2018 Annual Meeting, August 5-7, Washington, D.C. 274317, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    12. Yulong Shu & Kai Lin & Yafang Yu, 2024. "Study on Urban Land Simulation under the Perspective of Local Climate Zoning—A Case Study of Guiyang City," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(18), pages 1-19, September.
    13. Tian, Guangjin & Jiang, Jing & Yang, Zhifeng & Zhang, Yaoqi, 2011. "The urban growth, size distribution and spatio-temporal dynamic pattern of the Yangtze River Delta megalopolitan region, China," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 222(3), pages 865-878.
    14. Camacho, Carmen & Pérez-Barahona, Agustín, 2015. "Land use dynamics and the environment," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 96-118.
    15. Alessandro De Pinto & Gerald C. Nelson, 2007. "Modelling Deforestation and Land‐Use Change: Sparse Data Environments," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(3), pages 502-516, September.
    16. Yali Zhong & Shuqing Chen & Haihua Mo & Weiwen Wang & Pengfei Yu & Xuemei Wang & Nima Chuduo & Bian Ba, 2022. "Contribution of urban expansion to surface warming in high-altitude cities of the Tibetan Plateau," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 175(1), pages 1-22, November.
    17. Lina Eklund & Abdulhakim Abdi & Mine Islar, 2017. "From Producers to Consumers: The Challenges and Opportunities of Agricultural Development in Iraqi Kurdistan," Land, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-14, June.
    18. Xiaolong Jin & Penghui Jiang & Haoyang Du & Dengshuai Chen & Manchun Li, 2021. "Response of local temperature variation to land cover and land use intensity changes in China over the last 30 years," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 164(3), pages 1-20, February.
    19. Myeong Ja Kwak & Jong Kyu Lee & Sanghee Park & Yea Ji Lim & Handong Kim & Kyeong Nam Kim & Sun Mi Je & Chan Ryul Park & Su Young Woo, 2020. "Evaluation of the Importance of Some East Asian Tree Species for Refinement of Air Quality by Estimating Air Pollution Tolerance Index, Anticipated Performance Index, and Air Pollutant Uptake," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-18, April.
    20. Parker, Dawn Cassandra, 2007. "Revealing "space" in spatial externalities: Edge-effect externalities and spatial incentives," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 84-99, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:9:y:2020:i:9:p:282-:d:401623. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.