Assessment of Forest Resource Dynamics and Conservation Benefits in China’s Natural Forest Protection Project

The Natural Forest Protection Project (NFPP) that was launched in 2000 marked the transformation of China’s forestry from timber production to ecological development. To evaluate NFPP’s outcomes and conservation benefits, this study is based on the forest cover and fractional vegetation cover (FVC) maps to analyze the quantity and the quality of forest resources in NFPP areas. Firstly, we used the cloud-free composition image, high-confidence training sample library, tiled-based random forest (RF) classification algorithm, and time series change detection method to develop the NFPP forest cover maps in 2000, 2010, and 2020. Then, we used morphological spatial pattern analysis (MSPA) to identify the landscape types of ecological significance for the NFPP region from 2000 to 2020. Finally, we examined the changing trends of FVC for the NFPP areas to analyze the spatial and temporal variation of the vegetation coverage. Our results showed that forest areas in the NFPP region have effectively improved during the implementation of the project, there is a 2.09% increase in forest coverage for the NFPP region since the year 2000. Meanwhile, the FVC kept increasing in all regions since the implementation of NFPP, the areas with increased FVC accounted for 78.22% of the total project areas. Results of this study show that the forest resources in the NFPP region are effectively protected and restored, and the implementation effect of the project is significant.