Stocking Density and DBH Distribution of Community Forests in Nepal
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Stocking Density and DBH Distribution of Community Forests in Nepal Hari Prasad Pandey1 · Shila Pokhrel2 Received: 21 July 2019 / Revised: 29 August 2020 / Accepted: 7 September 2020 © Steve Harrison, John Herbohn 2020
Abstract There is a growing concern for sustainable forest management globally, and individual countries have been developing national policies and plans for forest management. This is the case in Nepal, but a large area of national forests is still under protection due to lack of people-centric management guidelines. In this study, diameter (DBH) and height were measured for trees, and frequency was recorded for regenerations (sapling and seedling), in concentric circular plots of 8.92 m, 5.64 m and 1 m radius respectively, in 89 plots from two community forests in the Mid-hills of Western Nepal to analyze whether the forests could be used sustainably. Regression analysis and the Mann–Kendall and Sen’s slope coefficient tests were performed to determine the composition and structure of forests in relationship with elevation which largely determines forests’ type. It was found that seedling density decreases with increasing elevation, but sapling and tree density do not follow any significant pattern for elevation. The DBH size found to be inversely related to stand density for the two dominant tree species (Shorea robusta and Schima wallichii). In contrast, DBH did not vary significantly with elevation for Pinus roxburghii and Castanopsis indica. The DBH distribution of all trees (26 species) was found to decline consistently with stand age, indicating that the forests are in good condition to manage sustainably by a simple, people-centric and cost-effective regime of thinning and size-based harvesting. Results suggest that forest managers, forest users and policymakers need to develop and implement user-friendly forest management directives. Keywords Forest management · Mann–Kendall test · People-centric · Sen’s slope coefficient · Size-based
* Hari Prasad Pandey [email protected] 1
Planning, Monitoring and Coordination, Ministry of Forests and Environment, Singha Darbar, Kathmandu, Nepal
2
Division Forest Office, Arghakhanchi District, Nepal
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Vol.:(0123456789)
H. P. Pandey, S. Pokhrel
Introduction Well-managed forests provide multiple economic, socio-cultural and environmental benefits (Upadhyay et al. 2005) which have also been recognized by climate change conferences (including COP15 2009; UN 2015). In Nepal, the government strategy is to hand over accessible forest areas as community forests to forest user groups for protection, management and utilization of forest resources (GoN 2019). To date, more than one-third of the total forested area of the country has been handed over to more than 30,000 forest-dependent communities (Poudel 2018), for which about 1.45 million households or 35% of the total population of Nepal are involved in management through the formation of 22,266 community forests users groups (CFUGs). About 50% of these are in the Mid-hills region (GoN/Do
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