Nepal’s National Land Cover Monitoring System (NLCMS) was developed by the
Forest Research and Training Centre (FRTC), with technical support from SERVIR-HKH, a joint initiative of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID),
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).
Collaborators include
SERVIR–Mekong, at the
Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC),
SilvaCarbon,
Global Land Analysis, and Discovery (GLAD) group at the University of Maryland, and the
US Forest Service.
The NLCMS uses freely available remote-sensing data (Landsat) and a cloud-based machine learning architecture in the
Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform to generate land cover maps on an annual basis using a
harmonized and consistent classification system. The system was further customized from ICIMOD’s Regional Land Cover Monitoring System (RLCMS)
for Nepal. The NLCMS generates spatially seamless and temporally consistent annual land cover maps of the entire country and will be useful for national and international reporting on forest cover change, preparing a long-term strategy for achieving Nepal's Nationally Determined Contribution targets, and as a foundational dataset for evidence-based planning and policy development.
Data Visualization
The web-based application provides easy access to the harmonized land cover database for the entire country, different administrative units, or physiographic regions for the years 2000–2019. It provides user-friendly tools to generate maps, charts, and statistics that help understand the change processes better and aid informed decision-making.
Users can generate land cover data, maps, and trends for predefined administrative boundaries – seven provinces or 77 districts, or physiographic regions – High Himalaya, High Mountain, Siwalik, Middle Mountain, and Terai.
Users can also draw a polygon to compute land cover data for an area of interest (AOI).
For more information, please visit
https://servir.icimod.org/science-applications/national-land-cover-monitoring-system-nepal/
Feedback
We value your feedback. Please write to servirhkh@icimod.org and info@frtc.gov.np
