Remote Sensing and Forest Conservation: Challenges of Illegal Logging in Kursumlija Municipality (Serbia)

Miomir Jovanovic and Misko Milanovic

A chapter in Forest Ecology and Conservation from IntechOpen

Abstract: Evidence convincingly shows that illegal and corrupt activities are the major underlying cause of deforestation--illegal logging contributes up to 30% of the global market, in excess of US $20 billion a year. Since so much deforestation is a result of illegal logging, we cannot rely on official production statistics to capture deforestation. Given the importance and complexity of forest preservation, an attempt was made to evaluate the possible use of a normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) in local forest management and prevention of illegal logging and corruption. We used the example of southern Serbian municipality Kursumlija that in the 2006-2011 periods experienced a 10% loss in forest area, as the obvious result of abrupt illegal logging. This process was very easy to locate and quantify (because illegal logging produced large canopy gaps that extend from the border of Kosovo to approximately 3-4 km into the Kursumlija's territory). In short, NDVI is very promising for countries like Serbia (that rarely perform forest inventories): It is relatively cheap and quick, and it can provide forest managers with essential information; it is easy to implement; the objectivity of these methods can significantly help in avoiding corruption and illegal logging.

Keywords: illegal logging; deforestation; normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI); local forest management; Serbia; Kursumlija (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/54299 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ito:pchaps:112138

DOI: 10.5772/67666

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from IntechOpen
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Slobodan Momcilovic ().