International Journal of Geosciences, 2016, 7, 1191-1207 http://www.scirp.org/journal/ijg ISSN Online: 2156-8367 ISSN Print: 2156-8359 DOI: 10.4236/ijg.2016.710089 October 27, 2016 Spatiotemporal Monitoring for Deforestation and Forest Degradation Activities in Selected Areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) Saif ur Rehman Khalid, Mobushir Riaz Khan, Muhammad Usman * , Muhammad Waqar Yasin, Muhammad Shahid Iqbal Department of Geo-Informatics, Pir Mehr Ali Shah Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi, Pakistan Abstract The global significance of forest ecosystems requires precise determination of the amount of carbon stored in different forest ecosystems. Regular monitoring of forests can aid in designing efficient climate change control strategies at national and global scale specially in reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation strategies. This research is designed to focus on determining deforestation of study area from 2001 to 2011 using Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques. This research provided rate and amount of degradation of forests in the study area and was quite helpful in formulating a strategy to earn carbon credits con- sistently and, therefore, will help in the uplifting of the standards of local population. Keywords Deforestation, Degradation, Carbon Credits, Climate Change 1. Introduction One of the most debated and provocative science issues of 21st century is Global Warming. Report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on this issue, proclaims that the scientific concerns and suspicions of global warming are fundamen- tally determined. According to this report, there is 20 cm rise in sea level and 0.6˚C rise in global temperature during the last century i.e. 20th century. The IPCC report also suggests that by the end of this century, global temperature could rise by 1.4˚C to 5.8˚C and sea level could rise by between 20 cm and 88 cm if situation remains unchanged [1]. How to cite this paper: Khalid, S. ur R., Khan, M.R., Usman, M., Yasin, M.W. and Iqbal, M.S. (2016) Spatiotemporal Moni- toring for Deforestation and Forest Degra- dation Activities in Selected Areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK). International Journal of Geosciences, 7, 1191-1207. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ijg.2016.710089 Received: April 4, 2016 Accepted: October 24, 2016 Published: October 27, 2016 Copyright © 2016 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access