Department of Geography, G.C.U.

F, Pakistan 2020

A Final Project
On
“Estimating Deforestation of Gatwala Forest Park District
Faisalabad through Sentinal-2 and Landsat Imagery”

Bachelor of Science (Honours)

Submitted to: Submitted by:
Miss Areeba Gillani Mahnoor Babar
Abdul Haye Haider
Iqra Zulfiqar
Muhammad Umair
Robeel Zahid
Waseem Hassan
Senior Lecturer Students of 7th Semester

Department of Geography, Government College University

Faisalabad
 Department of Geography, G.C.U.F, Pakistan 2020

Estimating Deforestation of Gatwala Forest Park District

Faisalabad through Sentinal-2 and Landsat Imagery
Robeel Zahid, Iqra Zulfiqar, Muhammad Umair, Mahnoor Babar, Abdul Haye Haider ,
Waseem Hassan
Department of Geography, Government College University Faisalabad

TABLE OF CONTENT
Abstract-...................................................................................................................................................................3

Keywords-.................................................................................................................................................................3

1.Introduction...........................................................................................................................................................3

Background.......................................................................................................................................................3

NEED OF THE STUDY:........................................................................................................................................5

AIMS &OBJECTIVE:............................................................................................................................................5

Study Area.........................................................................................................................................................5

LITERATURE REVIEW:................................................................................................................................................6

Methodology.....................................................................................................................................................6

Supervised Classification...................................................................................................................................7

Accuracy assessment through Kappa Coefficients............................................................................................8

Error Matrix Resulting from Classifying Test pixels..........................................................................................8

Kappa Coefficient ¿ ).........................................................................................................................................9

Cohen’s Kappa................................................................................................................................................10
 Department of Geography, G.C.U.F, Pakistan 2020

ABSTRACT-

KEYWORDS-

1.INTRODUCTION
Background
Forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Forests are significant for natural and
ecological processes. It is responsible for rains on the land. It also prevents soil erosion.
Forests still cover 30% area of the earth land, but every year the average area of
75,625km² is lost(Faiza, Weiguo, Aijun, & Wenxing, 2017).The world’s forest area
covered 30% of the global land area (3.8 billion hectares) in 2005 that has
slightly increased to 31% (3.99 billion hectares) in 2015. Globally, over 1 billion
people depend on forests for livelihood (FAO 2010;UNEP2011a).Afforestation
projects got momentum in developing countries especially during 1970s and
1980s(Michikazu et al., 1999).Afforestation projects got momentum in
developing countries especially during 1970s and 1980s (Thomas et.,al 2010).
In forestry sector, the global profile for the projects under CDM sets India at the
top with 9 projects, China with 4 and Pakistan with no projects.((Larson, Dinar et
al. 2011)). 2011 was considered “the international year of the forest” by the UN for
sustainable forest management(Owais, Siddiqui, & Geology, 2019)
 Department of Geography, G.C.U.F, Pakistan 2020

Problem statement
Pakistan has less than 5% of forest cover over the total land area(Faiza et al.,
2017).
deforestation is a big reason that caused by agriculture expansion, population
pressure, commodity and timber prices, wage levels, population growth, tourism,
improvement of accessibility and increase of linkages between high and low lands,
change in lifestyle and cultural patterns, opening to the external economies and
global economic integration, external interventions in the form of
developmentinitiatives, and lack of governmental policies and high illegal
harvesting activities((Rauf, Khan et al. 2019)
FAO’s report claimed that the annual forest cover change rate during 1990-
2000 was -1.8% and during 2000-2012 it was -2.2 (Qamer et al., 2012). The forest
change detection can be calculated by GIS technology truly because it can handle
both ‘spatial’ and ‘a spatial’ data(Ahmad et al., 2012). Change detection for GIS is
a process that measures how the attributes of a particular area have changed
between two or more periods (Zaib un Nisa1 & Batool2, 2018).

Satellite images are very useful for both statistical and visual evaluation
of natural resources and land cover change(Uddin et al., 2019). The remote
Sensing technique is more accurate and useful. It provides large area coverage for
calculating change detection and also for forest mapping(KHAN, 2019). The
application of GIS & RS is in the mapping of different natural resources and
spatial data modeling. It has been also used in single thematic analyses such as
LULC mapping, forest monitoring, and forest fire management(Sajjad et al., 2015).
Our area of interest is Gatwala Forest Park that is situated 17km of Faisalabad
along Faisalabad- Sheikhupura Road and 120km away from Lahore. The rate of
annual rainfall in Faisalabad was 615mm. In this study we use two types of
datasets one is Landsat-5 and the other is sentinel -2 image .Sentinel-2 provides
images of high resolution(Anwar Ali 1, 2018).
NEED OF THE STUDY:
Pakistan has been consistently ranked among the ten countries worst
affected by climate change. The increased frequency and intensity of
extreme climate events during the last two decades in Pakistan, has had
serious and long-term adverse impacts on the country.To bring the
 Department of Geography, G.C.U.F, Pakistan 2020

greenhouse gas emissions down to net zero and prevent a climate tipping
point we need afforestation to tackle a problem that faces our country .

AIMS &OBJECTIVE:
The major objectives of the study were:
 Calculate how much Afforestation happens in Gatwala Forest.
 Determine forest density rate between 2000 to 2020.
 Measure the factors that affect t(Thomas, Dargusch et al. 2010)he forest by
applying different analyses on software.

Study Area

Gatwala Forest Park (GFP) is located along 17km Faisalabad to Sheikhupura

road, and it is situated near Khurrianwala and 140km away from Lahore Zoo,
Punjab, Pakistan. It is the largest park in Faisalabad. Gatwala Forest Park is a huge
compound of more than 100km² that houses Forest areas, parks, lakes, and
administrative buildings of the Ministry of Forestry. It was established in 1992.
The latitude and Longitude of Gatwala are 31.4658°N and 73.1940°E. It covers an
area of 131 acres. Almost the distance from Clock Tower, Faisalabad is 20km. The
annual rainfall rate in this forest is 615mm. Almost all types of plants are available
in this forest. Many types of herbaceous plants are also available in this Forest that
is used for the treatment of common cold, sore throat, skin disorders, hepatic
diseases, asthma, joint pains(Ahmad, 2015). The hottest month is June with
minimum and maximum temperature of 29°C to 43°C. The coldest month is
December with minimum and maximum temperature of 19°C to 24°C.
CH .2

LITERATURE REVIEW:
 Department of Geography, G.C.U.F, Pakistan 2020

Methodology

Various conventional methods are accessible for data collection from the forest
fields. Taking out block-level information is contemplate most commonly used due
to its accuracy of more than 90% but it is a laborious, time-consuming, cost-
effective, and hectic method. Large numbers of laborers required for this type of
methodology may lead to considerable errors.

Therefore, we used remotely sensed datasets of Landsat -5 and Sentinel-2 to

estimate deforestation in the investigation site.
 Department of Geography, G.C.U.F, Pakistan 2020

Sr.no platform Date of acquisition Resolution

1 Landsat- 5 Oct 28,2000 30m
2 Sentinel-2 Oct 17,2020 10m , 20m

Spectral responses captured by spectral bands in red and near-infrared wavelength

are very useful to estimate the health, growth and finally, production of forests
have proved by various researchers. Moreover, these responses are used to
compute vegetation indices including Normalized Difference Vegetation Index
(NDVI) and Ratio Vegetation Index(RVI), etc. These indices are very useful to
differentiate the vegetative content existing in an investigation area compare to
other features.

For the detection of vegetation in the satellite image and defined ranges for all
land use features existing in the study area, NDVI was used for this.NDVI can be
estimated by using the following formula.
NIR − RED
NDVI =
NIR − RED

Where NIR is near-infrared.

Vegetation response is captured maximum in NIR and minimum in red
wavelength.

Supervised Classification
To check the reliability of NDVI based classification we executed supervised
classification in Erdas Imagine 14 on the stack satellite image. A field survey was
conducted using GPS to select samples from some remote locations which were
not easily detectable on the satellite image with the naked eye.
 Department of Geography, G.C.U.F, Pakistan 2020

Accuracy assessment through Kappa Coefficients

We executed ground validation by creating a relationship between the supervised
map and the real-time google earth imagery for accuracy assessment of supervised
classification. To estimate the accuracy index Kappa Coefficient was used. A
relationship established between classified map features to actual ground reality in
the Kappa Coefficient.
To check the features is existing on the ground or not, the features are marked with
a pinpoint on the classified map in this process. multiple pinpoints are marked to
find out the correct locations in comparison to misleading in this way. It is also
called the accuracy of the expert, which can be expressed by the following
formula:
C Ps
Accuracy= × 100
T Ps
where CPs and TPs are corrected and total points respectively. Kappa Coefficient
can be estimated using the following expression.

[T P s ∗C Ps ]−∑ [Col ∗ Rows]

Kappa= x 100
T P2s −∑ [Col ∗ Rows]

For the calculation of the Kappa Coefficient, all the input elements are rows and
columns. e.g. the input figures for vegetative and non-vegetative area are
as below in Table

Error Matrix Resulting from Classifying Test pixels

Class Vegetation Non-vegetation Total(User)

vegetation 16 3 19
Non-vegetation 4 18 22
 Department of Geography, G.C.U.F, Pakistan 2020

Producer(Total) 20 21 82

We calculate producer Accuracy by using following formula:

Producer Accuracy=
Number of Correctly Classified Pixels∈eacℎcategory
× 100
Total number of Classified Pixels ∈tℎat Category (Column Total)

After applying this formula vegetation part is 80% and non-vegetation is

85.71% .and calculate User’s accuracy by this formula:
Number of Correctly Classified Pixels∈ eacℎcategory
User’s Accuracy = Total number of Classified Pixels ∈tℎat Category (Row Total) ×100

In user’s Accuracy vegetation portion cover 84.21% and non-vegetation

portion cover 81.82%.Overall Accuracy calculate by following formula:
Total Number of Correctly Classified Pixels( Diagonal )
Overall Accuracy = Total Number of Reference Pixels
×100

Overall Accuracy result is 82.92%.

Kappa Coefficient ¿ ) extracted by this formula:

r

Kappa Coefficient ¿ ) = N ( ∑ x ii) −¿ ¿

i=1

where r = number of rows in the error matrix

xii = number of observations in row i and column i (on the major
diagonal)
 Department of Geography, G.C.U.F, Pakistan 2020

Xi+ = total of observations in row i (shown as marginal total to right of

the matrix)
X+i = total of observations in column i (shown as marginal total at
bottom of the matrix)
N = total number of observations included in matrix

( )
r
N ∑ x ii =41 ∗(16+18)=1394
i =1

¿=800

1394 −800
Kappa = 2
41 − 800

=594/881 = 0.67.42 %=67.42%

Cohen’s Kappa
Cohen Suggested the Kappa result be interpreted as follows :
Values <0 as indicating no agreement and 0.01 to 0.20 as none to slight,
0.21 to 0.40 as fair, 0.41 to 0.60 as Moderate, 0.61 to 0.80 as substantial
and 0.81 to 1.00 as almost perfect agreement.
Our Kappa Value is between 0.61 to 0.80 which is
substantial which mean considerable.
 Department of Geography, G.C.U.F, Pakistan 2020

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