Forest Change and Its Effect on Biomass in Yok Don National Park in Central Highlands of Vietnam Using Ground Data and Geospatial Techniques

This paper assesses the changes in forest cover in Yok Don National Park of Vietnam between 2004 and 2010, and the implications of such changes on the biomass stocks of this national park. Remote sensing and GIS tools along with the ground truth data collected from the field were employed for classifying the forest types of the study area from SPOT HRV satellite imagery for years 2004 and 2010. The total area considered in this study is 115.5 thousand ha. Five different categories of forests were identified. The results demonstrated that between 2004 and 2010, the Evergreen broad leaved rich quality forest decreased by 11.2 thousand ha (3.5 Mega tons of biomass) and the Dry open dipterocarps medium quality forest decreased by 15.3 thousand ha (2.5 Mega tons of biomass). In that time period, the Evergreen broad leaved medium quality forest increased by 3.2 thousand ha (0.8 Mega tons of biomass), the Evergreen broad leaved poor quality forest increased by 2.5 thousand ha (0.24 Mega tons of biomass), and the Dry open dipterocarps poor quality forest increased by 3.2 thousand ha (0.69 Mega tons of biomass). Total biomass of the study area decreased by 4.3 Mega tons.