Monitoring Parks Through Remote Sensing: Studies in Nepal and Honduras

Abstract

The effectiveness of parks as management regimes is hotly contested. Much of the current discussion centered around comparisons of management regimes can be traced to a dearth of cross-site quantitative evaluations. Remote sensing provides a particularly effective tool for this purpose, yet analysis of remotely sensed data requires fieldwork to interpret human activities and the socioeconomic and political contexts that relate to land cover change. This paper examines the effect of establishment of the Celaque National Park, Honduras, and the Royal Chitwan National Park buffer zone, Nepal, on limiting deforestation. In Celaque, the park itself has been largely successful in maintaining forest cover. However, recent changes in land use patterns have led to increasing pressure on the park boundaries, exacerbated by the lack of involvement of local residents. In the Royal Chitwan National Park, in contrast, participatory approaches towards co-management have been implemented over the past decade in the park buffer zone. With significant incomes derived from ecotourism, complete protection of the buffer zone forest has been adopted, leading to significant regrowth of tree cover. However, local decision-making power is limited, and buffer zone management has largely proven successful due to the investment and support provided by international donor agencies. These two case studies demonstrate the utility of remote sensing and Geographical Information Systems analysis in providing a spatiotemporal perspective for assessing management policies. They also demonstrate the importance of fieldwork to provide a nuanced understanding of the socioeconomic and institutional conditions affecting the outcomes of forest management regimes.

Simulating Forest Cover Changes of Bannerghatta National Park Based on a CA-Markov Model: A Remote Sensing Approach

“…A five km spatial buffer area around BNP acts as the unprotected area of the study. We created a GIS buffer region taking a five km radius extending outside the outer park boundary to compare the land cover change between the buffer and park area which has been a common practice in park effectiveness studies [21]. Moreover we took a five km limit for our GIS buffer because most of the forest cover outside BNP lies within five km of the park boundary range.…”

“…However, within these two broader frameworks of forest management approaches, inclusionary and exclusionary approaches [20], people have debated over the effectiveness of each approach [21]. Although in the 50s, more top-down, state-centered management practices were promoted, the recent policy trends have been towards inclusionary forest management [19][20][21][22], even though many PAs in the world still have exclusionary management policies [20]. Indian forest management policies have inclined towards exclusionary approaches, which is a top-down state-centered approach [21].…”

“…Globally, forest management policies within PAs have varied from a complete exclusion of people and no extraction of any forest resources; to a more inclusive forest management approaches where local inhabitants co-manage the forest with the government; to completely owning and managing the forest; to a more privately managed forest reserve [12][13][14][15][19][20][21]. However, within these two broader frameworks of forest management approaches, inclusionary and exclusionary approaches [20], people have debated over the effectiveness of each approach [21].…”

Size-dependent resistance of protected areas to land-use change

“…However, Vanclay (2001) re-examined the same dataset and obtained different results, concluding that the results obtained by Bruner et al (2001) remain equivocal. Other studies have demonstrated that PAs have been effective in preventing deforestation and habitat loss ( Nagendra et al 2004;Nepstad et al 2006), but there are many cases where existing PAs have not been able to stop habitat degradation (Schwartzman et al 2000;Curran et al 2004;Fuller et al 2004;Sigel et al 2006;Verburg et al 2006;Gaveau et al 2007), possibly owing to ineffective management strategies (Ervin 2003).…”

Linking multi-level governance to local common-pool resource theory using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis: Insights from twenty years of biodiversity conservation in Costa Rica

“…Other scholars have cautioned about the negative consequences that different institutional arrangements at multiple jurisdictional levels can have for effective development aid (Gibson et al, 2005). Yet others have found instances where the support by international donor agencies led to successful protected area buffer zone management (Nagendra et al, 2004). These examples restate the relevant, but mixed, performance that certain kinds of multi-level linkages might have for developing local autonomy.…”