Land use and land cover changes along the China-Myanmar Oil and Gas pipelines - Monitoring infrastructure development in remote conflict-prone regions.

Publisher: Public Library of Science Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 101285081 Publication Model: eCollection Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1932-6203 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 19326203 NLM ISO Abbreviation: PLoS One Subsets: MEDLINE

Original Publication: San Francisco, CA : Public Library of Science

Conservation of Natural Resources* ; Environmental Monitoring* ; Oil and Gas Fields*; China ; Forestry ; Geography ; Models, Theoretical ; Myanmar ; Satellite Imagery

Energy infrastructures can have negative impacts on the environment. In remote and / or sparsely populated as well as in conflict-prone regions, these can be difficult to assess, in particular when they are of a large scale. Analyzing land use and land cover changes can be an important initial step towards establishing the quantity and quality of impacts. Drawing from very-high-resolution-multi-temporal-satellite-imagery, this paper reports on a study which employed the Random Forest Classifier and Land Change Modeler to derive detailed information of the spatial patterns and temporal variations of land-use and land-cover changes resulting from the China-Myanmar Oil and Gas Pipelines in Ann township in Myanmar's Rakhine State of Myanmar. Deforestation and afforestation conversion processes during pre- and post-construction periods (2010 to 2012) are compared. Whilst substantial forest areas were lost along the pipelines, this is only part of the story, as afforestation has also happened in parallel. However, afforestation areas can be of a lower value, and in order to be able to take quality of forests into account, it is of crucial importance to accompany satellite-imagery based techniques with field observation. Findings have important implications for future infrastructure development projects in conflict-affected regions in Myanmar and elsewhere.
Competing Interests: No authors have competing interests.

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Date Created: 20200820 Date Completed: 20201014 Latest Revision: 20201014

20240628

PMC7437919

10.1371/journal.pone.0237806

32813694