April 25: The Forest Research and Training Centre (FRTC) announced the launch of Nepal’s National Land Cover Monitoring System (NLCMS) in collaboration with various stakeholders on the occasion of the Earth Day on April 22.

The system uses cloud computing and artificial intelligence to generate consistent data on how much of a region is covered by forests, wetlands, agriculture, and other land and water types, on an annual basis, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) said in a statement.  

Based on the NLCMS, the government has classified Nepal’s land into 11 different categories including forest land, agriculture land, grassland, bush, marshland, snow land, glacier, rock, flood land, shelter land and vegetation-less land.

According to the state-owned national news agency RSS, the forests of Nepal covered 39.99 per cent of the total land in 2000 which increased to 41.69 per cent in 2019. Similarly, the agriculture area decreased from 26.31 per cent in 2000 to 24.21 per cent in 2019.         . 

According to ICIMOD, the NLCMS will improve reporting on forest cover change and support Nepali lawmakers in making evidence-based policies to improve related land management practices.

The FRTC developed the NLCMS with support from SERVIR-HKH, a joint initiative of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).