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FOREST COVER CHANGE AND MIGRATION IN IRAQI KURDISTAN: A CASE STUDY FROM ZAWITA SUB-DISTRICT By Warveen L. Mosa A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Forestry - Master of Science 2016 ABSTRACT FOREST COVER CHANGE AND MIGRATION IN IRAQI KURDISTAN: A CASE STUDY FROM ZAWITA SUB-DISTRICT By Warveen L. Mosa Environmentally-induced migration has been raising attention worldwide. However, environmentally-induced migration is more common in developing countries where rural to urban transition often takes place in an unmanaged way, due to many factors. Identifying the drivers and underlying factors behind land cover change is crucial for ecosystem management and planning. Rural to urban migration in Iraqi Kurdistan has increased significantly over the last four decades. The purpose of this study is to investigate the motivation behind rural-urban migration, and to determine the relationship, if any, between changes in the environment (forest cover change specifically) and rural to urban migration. This study focused on the sub-district of Zawita (in Iraqi Kurdistan) and involved three types of data: forest inventory, remote sensing data and household survey data. To investigate forest cover change, four Landsat images of the study site were used. To minimize the atmospheric effects, radiometric normalization was applied followed by supervised classification to classify the land coverage. The images showed significant change in forest cover between 1986-2015 with an overall accuracy of 84%, 92%, 93%, and 98% for 1986, 1998, 2006, and 2015, respectively. Furthermore, to support conclusions drawn from remote sensing data, forest inventory data showed the degraded condition of the forests within Zawita, most noticeably the broad-leaved forests which appear to be used more frequently as compared to coniferous forests. Migration data were also collected from household surveys. The results of these surveys showed a decline in the villages’ populations between 1986-2015. Where forest degradation was observed, village population declines were apparent. Analyses of the householders’ responses showed that political factors were the ultimate reason forcing people to migrate. However other factors also influenced the extent and flow of migration and the associated changes in forest cover in Zawita as well. I dedicate my thesis work to my family and friends. A special feeling of gratitude to my loving mother, Mrs. Asmer Khalid whose words of encouragement and push for tenacity ring in my ears. My loving husband Ammad Zia whom without his support I would’ve gave up long time ago. My siblings whom have never left my side and are very special. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my academic supervisor Dr. David MacFarlane, associate professor at Michigan State University for his continuous help and immense knowledge, guidance and patience, which enabled me to improve an understanding of my thesis subject. I owe my sincere gratitude to my thesis committee, Dr. Andrew Finley, and especially Dr. Robert Richardson, for his valuable comments and kind guidance. I would also want to thank Kurdistan Regional Government for funding my research through their human capacity development program and the Department of Forestry at Michigan State University for their financial support. Many thanks to the Graduate school, Agriculture and Natural Resources department at Michigan State University, and especially Dr. Brandenberg for their financial contribution. Office of international student and scholar at Michigan State University, especially Takhmina Maralbaeva, an international Student and Scholar Advisor, for her enormous help and support throughout my study. I would like to thank Dr. David Lusch, senior research specialist at Department of Geography, Michigan State University for his patience and his kind guidance and continues help in analyzing the remote sensing data for this project. Remote sensing and GIS Research and Outreach Services at Department of Geography at Michigan State University and especially Robert Goodwin, GIS and remote sensing analyst for his kind help and guidance for processing Landsat imageries for this study. It is a pleasure for me to thank Mr. Ashty Saleem, Curtin University/Australia for his great help in guiding me and providing me with valuable Knowledge. I am indebted to my colleagues at the Department of Forestry, Erika Kraus, Sahar Haghighat, Garrett Dettmann for their academic help and comments and personal supports during my Master’s degree and especially in this thesis. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................................................... vii LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................................... ix KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS .................................................................................................................... xi Chapter 1: Introduction and Background ........................................................................................... 1 1.1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: Background ......................................................................................................................... 4 2.1. Environmentally-induced migration ............................................................................................. 4 2.2. Migration and forest degradation ................................................................................................. 6 Chapter 3: Study area ............................................................................................................................ 8 3.1. Kurdistan region ............................................................................................................................. 8 3.2. Forests in Kurdistan ....................................................................................................................... 9 3.3. Zawita district ............................................................................................................................... 13 Chapter 4: Methods .............................................................................................................................. 15 4.1. Experimental design ..................................................................................................................... 15 4.2. Households survey ........................................................................................................................ 16 4.2.1. The survey structure ................................................................................................................. 16 4.2.2. Key informant interview .......................................................................................................... 18 4.3. Forest inventory data .................................................................................................................... 21 4.4. LULCC mapping approach ......................................................................................................... 23 4.4.1. Data acquisition and sensor parameters ................................................................................. 23 4.5. Pre-processing ............................................................................................................................... 25 4.5.1. Sensor Radiometric correction ................................................................................................ 25 4.5.2. Classification method ................................................................................................................ 25 4.5.3. Classification validation ........................................................................................................... 28 Chapter 5: Results ................................................................................................................................ 30 5.1. Survey Summary results .............................................................................................................. 30 5.1.1. Householder’s characteristics .................................................................................................. 30 5.1.2. Migrants characteristics ........................................................................................................... 31 5.1.3. Survey results- migrants age and destination ......................................................................... 32 5.1.4. Survey results – Householders interactions with forests ....................................................... 33 5.1.5. Survey results- Migration degradation and government forest policies .............................. 35 5.1.6. Survey results-Migration motivation ...................................................................................... 37 v 5.2. Forest inventory results ................................................................................................................ 39 5.3. Forest conditions and disturbances ............................................................................................. 47 5.4. Remote sensing results - Classification accuracy ......................................................................
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