Local Ecological Knowledge, Reforestation, and Vegetation Recovery: A Remote Sensing Based Assessment in Gandaki Province, Nepal

Reforestation efforts that integrate local ecological knowledge (LEK) have demonstrated their potentia to enhance vegetation recovery by leveraging local communities' adaptive understanding of ecosystems. This study evaluates the impacts of a reforestation project that integrated LEK and was implemented in central Nepal between 2010 and 2016. Using satellite-based remote sensing data and propensity score matching, the research isolates the effects of interventions integrating LEK on vegetation recovery, as measured by the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). The analysis, which uses Sentinel-2 imagery and covariates such as topography, soil characteristics, and past vegetation patterns, reveals statistically significant NDVI improvements in project areas over the study period: 0.0341 in 2018, 0.0670 in 2020, and 0.0737 in 2022. Furthermore, by 2022, the project contributed considerably to achieving medium-high vegetation health, increasing the probability of attaining this vegetation health status by 19.14 percentage points. The improvement in vegetation health suggests that the reforestation project not only has enhanced canopy cover but also is associated with improved soil nutrient availability and increased organic carbon storage. These factors contribute to long-term forest regeneration by facilitating nutrient cycling, stabilizing soil, and promoting sustained vegetation growth. Sensitivity analyses confirm the robustness of these results against potential unobserved confounders, underscoring the reliability of the findings. The integration of local communities' knowledge into species selection may have played a crucial role in these improvements while supporting sustainable forest management practices. These findings add to the growing body of evidence supporting the integration of LEK in reforestation initiatives, offering practical implications for global biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation efforts.