PJB-2021-60
Geospatial surveillance of urban influence on the green gold of federal capital of Pakistan using contemporary ordination and remote sensing-based approaches
Amna Butt, Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa, Sheikh Saeed Ahmed, Muhammad Talha Ahmed, Amna Zafar and Javeria Rashid
Abstract
Understanding the consequences of urban influence on urban green gold is of paramount significance yet very complicated. The amalgamation of remote sensing and ordination techniques in the present research made it possible to appraise the extent of risk urban influence posed on these ecological amenities over the past two decades (1998-2018). The research outcomes highlighted that the urban expansion in the federal capital was mostly at the expense of vegetation where the urban green gold covered areas of Islamabad shrunk from 70% in 1998 to 60.7% by 2018 with significant losses observed in the vicinity of Margalla hills and Rawal watershed. This landscape change had a severely negative connotation on the species distribution primarily in the planned and rudimentary developments where environmental stresses introduced due to massive construction activities favored dominance of species instead of diversity. The progressive decline in biomass of the local vegetation over the years, as determined by all the indices, is an indication of a very unsustainable future in the absence of strong policy interventions.
To Cite this article:
Butt, A., A. Sanchez-Azofeifa, S.S. Ahmed, M.T. Ahmed, A. Zafar and J. Rashid. 2022. Geospatial surveillance of urban influence on the green gold of federal capital of Pakistan using contemporary ordination and remote sensing-based approaches. Pak. J. Bot., 54(5): DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.30848/PJB2022-5(25)
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