Geospatial analysis of chilghoza forest in Sulaiman Mountainous Range

Pinus gerardiana (chilghoza) is a rare gymnosperm that grows in dry temperate conditions. It is also consider as precious specie because of its medicinal and economical value. Pakistan is a blessed country with chilghoza forests in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), Balochistan, Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. This study was carried out to monitor the chilghoza growing in the Sulaiman Mountainous Region of Sherani district Balochistan, in order to detect the health status and land cover changes of chilghoza from the year 1999 to 2019 by using the techniques of Geographical Information System and Remote Sensing. Supervised machine learning algorithm was employed to classify the seven land cover classes and calculate the area cover occupied by each class and also analyzed the shifting pattern of these classes. While Arc Model was built to check the health status. The results revealed that the area about 174 km2 was covered by thick chilghoza in the year 1999, but it decreased up to 84.9 km2 recorded in the year 2009, and increased again upto 127 km2 in the year 2019. On the other hand, sparse chilghoza occupied an area of 77.5 km2, 247.7 km2 and 139.9 km2 in the year 1999, 2009 and 2019, respectively. These results depicted the decrease in chilghoza cover during 1999–2009 year due to overexploitation and gradual increase in land cover of chilghoza after the year 2009 due to the conservation efforts carried by government and non-governmental organizations. Further conservation and protection are required for this specie because it is not only rare specie but also an excellent source for economic benefits on local, national and international scales.