Boundary Delineation of Ayubia National Park 1 Cover page design: Communications Division, WWF – Pakistan Photo Credits: Hassan Ali and Hammad Gilani, WWF – Pakistan Boundary Delineation of Ayubia National Park 2 CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................................................ II LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................................................................................. II LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS/ACRONYMS ....................................................................................................... III ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ...................................................................................................................................IV 1. INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. BACKGROUND..................................................................................................................................... 1 1.2. STUDY AREA....................................................................................................................................... 2 2. MATERIALS.............................................................................................................................................. 3 3. METHODOLOGY...................................................................................................................................... 4 3.1. PREPROCESSING ................................................................................................................................4 3.2. TOPOGRAPHIC MAPPING ..................................................................................................................... 5 3.3. GROUND TRUTHING AND FIELD DATA COLLECTION ............................................................................... 5 3.4. LANDCOVER MAPPING......................................................................................................................... 8 3.5. HABITAT MAPPING OF WILDLIFE SPECIES ........................................................................................... 12 3.6. BOUNDARY DELINEATION .................................................................................................................. 15 4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ............................................................................................................... 18 4.1. ANP BOUNDARY............................................................................................................................... 18 4.2. DRAFT NOTIFICATION FORMAT........................................................................................................... 19 5. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS......................................................................................... 26 ANNEXURE 1 (FIELD OBSERVATION POINTS) .......................................................................................... 27 ANNEXURE 2 (ANP NOTIFICATIONS).......................................................................................................... 28 ANNEXURE 3 (REFERENCES)...................................................................................................................... 30 Boundary Delineation of Ayubia National Park i List of Figures FIGURE 1. SEVEN PRIORITIZED PROTECTED AREAS................................................................................................. 2 FIGURE 2. LOCATION MAP OF AYUBIA NATIONAL PARK ........................................................................................... 3 FIGURE 3. FLOW CHART INDICATING PROJECT WORK .............................................................................................. 4 FIGURE 4. HIGH RESOLUTION MERGE OF QUICKBIRD SATELLITE IMAGE.................................................................... 5 FIGURE 5. TOPOGRAPHIC LAYERS OF ANP ............................................................................................................ 5 FIGURE 6. TRACKS AND FIELD OBSERVATION POINTS .............................................................................................. 6 FIGURE 7. FIELD MAP AT 1: 10,000 SCALE............................................................................................................. 6 FIGURE 8. CONIFER FOREST (A) DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH OF FIR AND DEODAR (B) DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH OF BLUE PINE ................................................................................................................................................................... 6 FIGURE 9. CONIFER FOREST MIXED WITH BROADLEAVED, SHRUBS AND GRASSES..................................................... 7 FIGURE 10. PASTURE LAND, DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH (LEFT) AND SATELLITE DATA (RIGHT)......................................... 7 FIGURE 11. FLOW CHART OF SUPERVISED CLASSIFICATION ................................................................................... 8 FIGURE 12. LANDCOVER/LANDUSE MAP .............................................................................................................. 10 FIGURE 13. RECODED LANDCOVER MAP .............................................................................................................. 11 FIGURE 14. DISTRIBUTION OF SOME BIRD SPECIES WITHIN ANP............................................................................ 13 FIGURE 15. DISTRIBUTION OF SELECTED MAMMAL AND REPTILES SPECIES WITHIN ANP ........................................ 14 FIGURE 16. PHOTOGRAPHS OF (A) ASC MEETING, (B) BOUNDARY PILLAR AND (C) MEETING WITH WILDLIFE OFFICIALS ................................................................................................................................................................. 16 FIGURE 17. ANP BOUNDARY OVERLAID WITH GDA POINTS................................................................................... 17 FIGURE 18. DIFFERENT SECTIONS OF ANP.......................................................................................................... 18 List of Tables TABLE 1. SATELLITE DATA CHARACTERISTICS................................................................................................................... 3 TABLE 2. AREA COVERED BY LANDCOVER/LANDUSE CLASSES ......................................................................................... 9 Boundary Delineation of Ayubia National Park ii List of Abbreviations/Acronyms ANP Ayubia National Park ASC Area Specific Committee DFO District Forest Officer ERDAS Earth Resources Data Analysis System FCC False Color Composites Ft Feet GCP Ground Control Point GDA Galliat Development Authority GIS Geographical Information System GPS Global Positioning System GR Game Reserve Ha Hectare IUCN International Union for Conservation of Nature MLC Maximum Likelihood Classifier MoE Ministry of Environment NP National Park N.W.F.P North Western Frontier Province PPEPCA Pakistan Petroleum Exploration & Production Companies Association RF Reserve Forest RS Remote Sensing SPOT Satellite pour l'Observation de la Terre SUPARCO Space and Upper Atmospheric Research Commission UC Union Council WS Wildlife Sanctuaries WWF World Wide Fund for Nature Boundary Delineation of Ayubia National Park iii Acknowledgement This report has been developed by the GIS team of WWF – Pakistan. Special thanks are due to the following GIS colleagues for their hard work and cooperation; Hammad Gilani, RS Analyst Hassan Ali, GIS Analyst (Species) Kaif Gill, GIS Analyst Tanzil-ur-Rehman, RS Intern Usman Akram, GIS Analyst I wish to express my gratitude to Dr. Muhammad Mumtaz Malik (Chief Conservator Wildlife, N.W.F.P), Mr. Safdar Shah (DFO Nathiagali), Mr. Dul Ahmed (Director GDA) and Mr. Mohammad Waseem for their support and cooperation throughout the boundary delineation process of Ayubia National Park. We would like to offer our sincere thanks to Mr. Muhammad Javed (Deputy Range Officer Wildlife Department) and Ms. Sabiha Zaman (WWF - Nathia Gali office) who helped in carrying out the field work. I am greatly indebted to Deputy Director General of WWF-P, Dr. Ejaz Ahmed and Manager Conservation Ms.Uzma Khan for their cooperation and guidance throughout the formulation of this report. I would also like to pay my gratitude to Ms. Nadia Aine for designing the title. Urooj Saeed GIS Coordinator Boundary Delineation of Ayubia National Park iv This study is funded by Pakistan Petroleum Exploration and Production Companies Association (PPEPCA) for the project “Boundary Demarcation and Renotification of Protected Areas”. Report deals with GIS based boundary delineation of Ayubia National Park (ANP). SPOT (2.5m) image, Quickbird (0.6m) image, DEM, TIN and bio-physical GIS layers such as roads, ridges, settlements, nullahs, forest etc were used for the boundary delineation. Field survey of the area was conducted to collect reference landmarks of with geographic coordinates with reference to the boundary. Area Specific Committee was formulated which comprises of major stakeholders i.e. Wildlife and Forest Department, Revenue Department and Galliat Development Authority. Extensive discussion sessions with ASC members significantly helped to resolve major issues regarding NP boundary. ANP boundary layer is developed by excluding the GDA area in close peripheries of the National Park. Final ANP boundary covers an area of 3372 ha, whereas the area given in