Long-term monitoring of forest cover change resulting in forest loss in the capital of Luang Prabang province, Lao PDR

Loss of forest cover has an important impact on global climate change. This study investigated variation in forest cover in Luang Prabang district, the capital of Luang Prabang province, Lao PDR, using Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Operational Land Imager (OLI) satellite imagery over the period 1988-2021. The maximum likelihood classification technique was used to classify Landsat images of the years 1988, 2001, 2011, and 2021 and was evaluated for accuracy using the kappa coefficient for each year (0.860, 0.869, 0.878, and 0.950, respectively). The potential of classification based on the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI) to detect changes in natural forest and cultivated forest cover compared with supervised classification was also evaluated. The natural forest cover of the study area was estimated at 84.09% (687.82 km(2)) of the total land area in 1988. This number decreased to 56.93% (465.69 km(2)) in 2001 and subsequently increased to 60.85% (497.77 km(2)) in 2011 and 66.49% (543.92 km(2)) in 2021. Cultivated forest cover in 1988 was 4.96% (40.58 km(2)) and increased to 16.84% (137.76 km(2)) in 2001, however it decreased to 13.57% (110.97 km(2)) in 2011 and 9.67% (79.10 km(2)) in 2021. Severely reduced forest cover is often associated with the expansion of agriculture on the forest edge. Logging and charcoal production are other problems that contribute to the reduction of forest cover. Overall, our results show the necessity of forest management, rational land-use planning policy, and increased community awareness of conservation and sustainable development of forest resources in the study area in the future.