AN ASSESSMENT OF THE IMPACT OF AFGHAN REFUGEES ON FOREST 
RESOURCES OF NORTHERN PAKISTAN USING MULTI TEMPORAL REMOTELY 
SENSED DATA 
Mahtab A. Lodhi' Fernando R. Echavarria? Chris Keithley! 
1. Center for Advanced Land Management & Information Technologies 
Conservation and Survey Division Institute of Natural Resources, University of 
Nebraska-Lincoln, NE 68588-0517 
2. Department of Geography, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, NE. 68588-0135 
ABSTRACT 
As world population swells, refugee movements across international borders will undoubtedly increase in 
both the developed and the developing world. The invasion of Afghanistan by the former Soviet 
Union forced over four million Afghan refugees to flee into neighboring Pakistan. Previous studies 
have noted that refugees have negatively impacted forest resources, but to date there has been little 
work done to assess the amount of deforestation associated with refugees in Pakistan. This paper 
examines the environmental impacts of 111,000 refugees residing in ten refugee camps located in 
the Siran Valley during 1978 to 1993. Multi temporal satellite images were georeferenced using 
1:50,000 scale topographic maps of the study area. A digital Elevation Model (DEM) was created 
to assist in discriminating cultivated areas from forest areas. An unsupervised classification scheme 
was applied to detect change in forest cover. The difficulties encountered in applying remote 
sensing techniques for change detection of forest cover are discussed. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
Satellite remote sensing technology 
provide a necessary historical record to 
perform spatial and temporal analysis of the 
changes in land cover. The use of satellite 
images to monitor land cover changes has been 
an active area of research since the early 
1970's. One of the major applications of 
remotely sensed data is the change detection 
(Singh, 1989). The change detection is useful 
for land use change analysis, assessment of 
deforestation, crop stress detection and scores 
of other environmental studies. The 
integration of Geographic Information System 
(GIS) has further strengthened the capability of 
remote sensing technology for monitoring and 
management of land resources. Integration of 
these technologies offer new opportunities for 
116 
rapid and cost effective analysis and display of 
geographic data. 
Pakistan has only 5.2 % of its total 
land area under forests. This is because more 
than 75 % of the area has an arid or semi-arid 
climate. Of the total forest area 72 % are 
protected, while the remaining 28 % are 
managed primarily as commercial forests for 
the production of timber wood (Sheikh, 1987). 
The invasion of Afghanistan by the 
former Soviet Union in 1978 forced over four 
million Afghan refugees to flee into Pakistan. 
The majority of these refugees were settled in 
the North Western Frontier Province (NWFP). 
This province has Pakistan's most extensive 
forests. The large number of refugees for 
more than a decade appear to have had a 
  
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