5. Conclusion
In the process of evaluating the impact of Rohingya influx to forest ecosystem function in Cox’s Bazar Teknaf peninsula, this study considered multiple factors to showcase present and future land use/cover change as well as loss of ecosystem function in an ecologically sensitive area. Multitemporal Sentinel imagery and collateral data were employed to quantify changes in forest cover and predict their distribution by incorporating important dynamic variables into the model. The results showed that forest cover degraded substantially to accommodate a large number of refugees that led to deterioration of forest ecosystem functions. Significant amount of above ground biomass loss and release of tons of carbons to the atmosphere in response to refugee rehabilitation were noteworthy. Importantly, this study quantified that 27,600 tons of carbon may have released to the atmosphere between 2017 and 2019 because of widespread deforestation. Further, modelling exercise indicated that the extent of forested lands and associated ecosystem functions could degrade substantially than might have anticipated at present. Consequently, wildlife habitat associated with forest degradation and fragmentation could endanger a number of flora and fauna, including the Asian elephant.
Despite this study has many implications (e.g. conservation of forest, policies), lack of cloud free satellite data was a major constraint to depict forest cover changes over different seasons. Hence, future work could use microwave data during the monsoon season and determine how regeneration of shrubs and mixed forest is occurring in the area. Taking regeneration of trees and shrubs into account may be useful to predict future changes of ecosystem functions. In addition, growth rate of Rohingya population was not considered in this study, accounting their growth rate could be of value to include in the dynamic model, used in this work. Finally, use of secondary data to estimate AGB may have under/over estimated actual figures. Even though deriving biomass data from the field is time and labor intensive, an ongoing work could provide better estimate related to biomass loss and carbon release, as a result of forest clearance, caused by Rohingya refugees. Despite these limitations, this work can be highly useful to determine the impact of refugee crisis on the environment with geospatial data in Bangladesh and elsewhere.