5. Modeling Landscape Level Forest Disturbance-Conservation Implications

Increasingly forest land is diverted to different land uses leading to various levels of disturbances in a landscape. Any disturbance could affect the structure and functions of a landscape, their inherent properties and interactions, thereby could lead to temporal or irreversible changes. In this chapter, the spatial distribution of various forests and non-forest patches were combined with road and settlement proximity zones using remote sensing and GIS tools to generate disturbance index (DI) of a landscape, by adopting landscape ecological principles. Various landscape ecological matrices such as forest fragmentation, interspersion, juxtaposition patchiness, and porosity, were analyzed using spatial analysis. Field sampling data on species richness from 862 plots (nested quadrats of 20 × 20 m²) were analyzed to adjudge the correlation between different DI levels and their diversity content, and interestingly, higher species richness was observed for lower DI levels. The study was selected is the northeastern India of the eastern Himalaya accommodating Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, and Meghalaya states. DI demonstrated progressive disturbance in the forest structure and composition. Meghalaya state has better reflected the decreasing pattern of DI with species richness and its endemic subset. Disturbance Index, a landscape-based model proved to have well captured the patterns and processes, thereby advocating wider application and replication for conservation planning.