The Forest Research and Training Centre (FRTC) announced the launch of Nepal’s
National Land Cover Monitoring System (NLCMS) in collaboration with various
stakeholders on the occasion of the Earth Day on April 22.
The
system uses cloud computing and artificial intelligence to generate consistent
data on how much of a region is covered by forests, wetlands, agriculture, and
other land and water types, on an annual basis, the International Centre for
Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) said in a statement.
Based
on the NLCMS, the government has classified Nepal’s land into 11 different
categories including forest land, agriculture land, grassland, bush,
marshland, snow land, glacier, rock, flood land, shelter land and
vegetation-less land.
According to the state-owned national news
agency RSS, the forests of Nepal covered 39.99 per cent of the total land in
2000 which increased to 41.69 per cent in 2019. Similarly, the agriculture
area decreased from 26.31 per cent in 2000 to 24.21 per cent in
2019. .
>According
to ICIMOD, the NLCMS will improve reporting on forest cover change and support
Nepali lawmakers in making evidence-based policies to improve related land
management practices.
The FRTC developed the NLCMS with support
from SERVIR-HKH, a joint initiative of the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID), the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) and the International Centre for Integrated Mountain
Development (ICIMOD).
source: the himalayan times, 27 April 2022
