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The Forested areas have been facing challenges due to various reasons such as adjacent communities exploiting forests in unsuitable ways in search of means of survival, climate change in the forested regions and other natural factors. As a result, forests decline and deprive at an alarming rate. Forest degradation therefore involves a quality reduction of the forest condition, this being related to one or a number of different forest ecosystem components, that is, vegetation layer, fauna, soil, to the interactions between these components, and more generally to its functioning. The study is meant to evaluate forest degradation in Kakamega Forest in Kenya. This will be done through linear combination of different generated vegetation indices; bare soil index, advanced vegetation index, thermal index, wetness index and normalized difference vegetation index. The data derived from the Land Surface Temperature calculation will be useful for analysis of land cover changes such as to detect forest disturbances. The vegetation indices have different weights and influence in the forest cover status. This study will help in the evaluation of forest loss with the knowledge of forest indices as indicators of phonological changes in the forest cover. This will further enable the bodies in charge and the forest planners in planning for rehabilitation programs, reforestation and deforestation for the purposes of sustainable management of forest resources. The spatial temporal change of the forest cover is assessed by use of Landsat thematic mapper 1989, 1994, Landsat ETM+ 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2014 and Landsat OLI 2018 images. For sustainable management of forested areas, it is necessary to acquire knowledge on the spatial temporal rate of forest degradation and the factors influencing it. |
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