The Impact of Road Opening on Vegetation Damage in the Bukit Barisan Forest Park Protected Forest in Indonesia

Abstract

Road opening on the Medan-Berastagi alternative route will begin in 2023 with a track length of approximately 55.87 km. The aim of this study was to analyze land cover in forest areas and recommend plants around the opening of the Medan-Berastagi alternative route, Kutalimbaru District. Data processing and retrieval was carried out in November 2023-January 2024. Calculation of the 2018 Sentinel image classification accuracy shows a Kappa Accuracy value of 86.20%. For the accuracy of the 2021 Sentinel image classification, the Kappa Accuracy value was 88.60%, it has 5 land cover classes, namely forest, bush, mixed gardens, built-up land, and open land. Vegetation density in the Bukit Barisan Forest Park, Kutalimbaru District, Deli Serdang Regency is divided into 5 classes, namely non-vegetation, sparse, medium, dense, and very dense. All land cover classes have different densities. There are 10 recommended plants that can be planted around the path, namely: Guava (Psidium guajava), durian (Durio zibethinus), petai (Parkia speciosa), avocado (Persea americana), longan (Dimocarpus longan), simartelu (Schima wallichii), rasamala (Altingia excelsa), meranti (Shorea leprosula), ingul (Toona sureni), meang (Alseodaphne sp).