| 研究実績の概要 |
This research aims to monitor the impact of large-scale biogas intervention on forest regeneration in Uttrakhand area of India. This intervention introduces biogas digesters and replaces fuelwood in 60 villages as part of a low-carbon farming initiative. The study's overarching goal is to examine the consequences of large-scale biogas interventions on forest regeneration and carbon storage in the forest surrounding villages that have adopted biogas technology as their primary source of fuel with comparable villages in the region that had not. We have processed multi-sensor remote sensing data and satellite data, clearly showing a changing forest cover pattern in the study area. Planet satellite-based vegetation data shows an increase of about 2 percent of forest cover in the areas near the villages with biogas intervention. However, it needs ground validation. We are planning to start collecting ground truth data to see the change in forest biomass based on the forest inventory data. High-resolution Planet data shows some vegetation recovery/regeneration in the study area. We are also going to conduct a questionnaire survey to identify the factors of forest recovery and how the people's socio-economic status affects the recovery of the forest in the study area. The questionnaire survey will be useful to get qualitative information about forest status and changes in people’s lifestyle after biogas intervention.
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| 今後の研究の推進方策 |
We will collect information on various factors that could influence forest recovery. In this FY we will collect demographic, socio-economic data that affect fuelwood collection from nearby forests. The above-mentioned data will be useful in selecting sampling site. We then divide the sampling site into 5x5km grids and identify comparable treatment and control grid units, where each unit contains a cluster of villages with or without existing biogas technology. We will establish permanent sampling plots (PSPs) to measure various biophysical parameters of forests (height, Diameter ad Brest Height (DBH), species, density, etc.) in each grid unit. We have already done preliminary cluster analysis using village-level livestock population, human population, extent of neighborhood forest and distance between a village and its neighboring forest. We will also calculate biomass of PSPs using allometric equations and upscale using satellite data. Multi-temporal, high-resolution satellite data (PALSAR, TDX, Planet) will be used to monitor changes in biomass and forest degradation due to fuelwood collection.
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