ırther north and 
refugee camps 
regions of Dir 
ught with them 
X, which also 
environmental 
| of forests may 
; and what was 
his destruction 
environmental 
study has been 
ch questions. 
morandums by 
nt have stated 
rest areas and 
1s of monitory 
andum dated 
the Divisional 
ject of “damage 
han refugees." 
situated in the 
s (all in Siran 
m. read, “the 
'avily damaged 
ar these forests 
y to meet their 
particular case 
759 acres. The 
o Guzara or 
„are. for. the 
al population. 
not enjoy the 
is the classified 
"he absence of 
make Guzara 
cit cutting. 
1 the impact of 
sts of northern 
ated two main 
the felling and 
of agricultural 
>s for fuelwood 
  
and excessive tapping for resin extraction. 
Allan also stated that refugees with agricultural 
backgrounds from interior and northern 
Afghanistan caused more damage to local 
forests compared to those who came from the 
northeastern forested regions of Afghanistan. 
Thus, the refugees impact on forests of 
Pakistan varied in accordance with the type of 
environment from which they originated and 
the type in which they were settled. 
In 1991, the NWFP government 
conducted a study under the Siran Forest 
Development Program to assess the overall 
damage to area forests (SFDP, 
According to this study, in 1979 about 850 km? 
(51 % of the total area) had a forest cover with 
a canopy cover of more than 35 %. Legally 
classified forest (state owned and private 
Guzara forests) covered 400 km? areas, 
whereas 450 km? of forest were on unclassified 
lands (mostly private ownership). In 1989, 470 
km? (28 % of the total area) remained under 
forest, of which 300 km? were on classified 
land and 170 km? on unclassified land. The 
total decrease of forested area between 1979 
and 1989 was 380 km? Thus, 23 percent of 
forested land in Siran Valley was converted 
either into grassland or agricultural land in just 
one decade. The unclassified private forests 
suffered the most loss due to lack of legal 
protection. 
4. THE RESEARCH OBJECTIVE 
The purpose of this on-going research 
is to examine the ways in which multi- 
temporal remotely sensed satellite data coupled 
with ancillary information could be used to 
analyze and effectively display the human 
induced forest cover changes in a mountainous 
terrain. The research was conducted to achieve 
three objectives: (1) Pre- and post refugees 
forest area assessment based on visual as well 
as digital interpretation of multi-temporal 
1991). 
119 
satellite data, (2) an assessment of the extent of 
damage to forests, (3) the type(s) of forests 
seriously affected by the presence of refugees. 
However, at the present time this research was 
restricted mainly to assess the utility of 
available material in order to conduct in-depth 
studies to achieve the above mentioned goals. 
5. SATELLITE DATA 
Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data 
for June 17, 1993 in digital (level 5) and 
photographic formats were supplied by the 
Pakistan’s Space and Upper Atmosphere 
Research Commission (SUPARCO), 
Islamabad Satellite Ground Station. Landsat 
Multi Spectral Scanner (MSS) data for 
November 12, 1975 were acquired by the U.S. 
Geological Survey, EROS Data Center, Sioux 
Falls, South Dakota, USA. Fall season 
(September to November) was considered as 
the best time to perform forest change 
detection in the Himalayas; as snow and cloud 
cover may obscure large portions of land 
surface in satellite data acquired during the 
winter. Tall, lush green grass cover on the 
mountains and cultivated fields in the valleys 
were likely to make interpretation of summer 
data even more complicated. Difficulties 
encountered during the interpretation of the 
data will be discussed in the latter section. 
6. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 
Environmental Systems Research 
Institute’s ARC/INFO geographic information 
system and ERDAS’s IMAGINE image 
processing software, both on SUN workstation 
were used to perform all image processing and 
digital data analysis. The Landsat TM image 
of 1993 was geometrically corrected and geo- 
referenced using Survey of Pakistan’s 1:50,000 
topographic maps. It was then projected onto 
a Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) 
projection using a bilinear interpolation