ABSTRACT
The forests in protected areas (PAs) of Karnataka are undergoing tumultuous changes due to unplanned activities with tourism, mining, and other activities. The current research analyzes the spatiotemporal changes in the select PAs such as Someshwara Wildlife Sanctuary (SWLS) and Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary (BWLS). Land use and land cover (LULC) analyses highlight as the evergreen cover has reduced from 38.75 to 31.43% by 2016 in SWLS and loss of deciduous forests from 50.09 to 37.43% in BWLS (1973–2016) with an increase of plantations, agriculture activities, which are threatening the ecological integrity of the region. The Markov cellular automata (MCA)-based visualization reveals loss of deciduous forest cover from 37.43 to 34.71% in BWLS by 2026 with an increase in agricultural activities along the edges of forests. SWLS shows loss of evergreen cover (31.43–28.84%) due to penetrations of horticulture crops (constitute 18.5%) and settlements.
Spatial decision support system (SDSS) is designed taking advantage of the recent advances in information and open-source web technologies, through the integration of spatial with attribute information. This enhances governance transparency while meeting societal needs, which helps in the prudent planning of the protected areas (PA). Visualization of landscape dynamics through synthesis and integration of information would enable 358understanding the current status and predict likely changes, which are essential for effective decision-making toward sustainable management of natural resources. Web-based spatial decision support system (WSDSS) would help in accomplishing effective dissemination of the ecological, socio, economic, biodiversity, and environmental information. Integration of temporal, spatial information with the simulation techniques facilitates visualization to analyze the viability of decisions through exploratory analysis based on multiple criteria, which enable a detailed comparative analysis of alternate scenarios.
