Assessment of natural regeneration status: the case of Durgapur hill forest, Netrokona, Bangladesh

Enumeration of regeneration status is an authentic tool to know the actual condition of forest ecosystem. The study was conducted to assess the regeneration status of Durgapur hill forest following stratified random sampling method (2 m × 2 m quadrate) from October 2017 to May 2018. A total of 27 species under 18 families were recorded from the study area. The study revealed maximum (37.78) family importance value (FIV) index was recorded for Euphorbiaceae followed by Moraceae (16.09). Importance value index (IVI) of Grewia nervosa was maximum (23.97 out of 300) followed by Shorea robusta (21.02), and Aporosa wallichii (20.19). Conservation status showed highest (77.78%) plant species were in least concerned (LC) where only one species (Dillenia pentagyna) was found as data deficient (DD) category. Seedlings of different height classes showed maximum (33.2%) seedling were within the height range of 50–<100 cm. However, different biological diversity indices, i.e., Shannon–Winner index (H) (4.27), species evenness index (E) (1.30), Simpson index (D) (0.15), and Margalef’s species richness index (4.24) were enumerated to know the complete diversity condition of the forest area. Hierarchical cluster of the recorded species also showed that Grewia nervosa is the most dominant species in that area

DTCTH: a discriminative local pattern descriptor for image classification

Abstract Despite lots of effort being exerted in designing feature descriptors, it is still challenging to find generalized feature descriptors, with acceptable discrimination ability, which are able to capture prominent features in various image processing applications. To address this issue, we propose a computationally feasible discriminative ternary census transform histogram (DTCTH) for image representation which uses dynamic thresholds to perceive the key properties of a feature descriptor. The code produced by DTCTH is more stable against intensity fluctuation, and it mainly captures the discriminative structural properties of an image by suppressing unnecessary background information. Thus, DTCTH becomes more generalized to be used in different applications with reasonable accuracies. To validate the generalizability of DTCTH, we have conducted rigorous experiments on five different applications considering nine benchmark datasets. The experimental results demonstrate that DTCTH performs as high as 28.08% better than the existing state-of-the-art feature descriptors such as GIST, SIFT, HOG, LBP, CLBP, OC-LBP, LGP, LTP, LAID, and CENTRIST

Community Dependency and Conservation Practices in Khagrachari, Bangladesh: A Study on Management of Village Common Forests (VCFs)

Forest is one of the main sources of different resources where indigenous communities are mostly dependent on the forest for their sustainable management of life. Following the dependency of indigenous communities on natural resources and their conservation practices and development of Village Common Forest (VCF) in Chittagong hill tracts. Present study was conducted at Haduk Para and Hridoy Member Para VCF’s in Khagrachari, Bangladesh to understand the dependency and practices of villagers on the VCF for their livelihood and other resources. Among different types of products extracted from Haduk Para and Hridoy Member Para, the monetary value was highest (14700 BDT and 22400 BDT, respectively) for timber but fuelwood is the most extracted product (1930 Kg HH-1Yr-1 and 2470 Kg HH-1Yr-1, respectively) they have collected from VCF. Besides, to fulfill daily personal needs different plant edible products, fauna, and medicinal plants have been collected by the community people from both VCFs. In case of conservation purpose, Hridoy Member Para giving more priority for protecting the source of water resources where the majority from Haduk Para community replied that their priority was to avert natural calamities. However, both the VCFs community have taken some initiatives to reduce the pressure from the forest floor like enrichment planting, non-wood forest products cultivation, regional training for handicraft manufacturing and alternative income generation activities for the villagers. Therefore, safeguarding forest and biodiversity resources and at the same time improving the livelihood security for the indigenous communities, nowadays is mandatory to protect and manage these VCFs from being degraded

Local policy networks in support of wood-based construction : A case study from Joensuu, Finland

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