Identification of ^Healing Forest^ as an ecosystem service of Educational Forest of Universitas Hasanuddin in Kecamatan Cenrana Kabupaten Maros.
Asrianny, Nasri, Gunawan

Universitas Hasanuddin

Abstract

Forest has numerous benefits for living creatures, especially humans. One of the benefits for humans is as a stress reliever medium that could ease some diseases. It is a potential for a nature-based disease treatment facility. Utilizing a forest^s ecosystem service to treat and or cure diseases is termed ^healing forest^. This phenomenon is still novel in Indonesia due to scarce studies on the topic. One of the potential areas to develop this facility is the Educational Forest of Universitas Hasanuddin in Kecamatan Cenrana Kabupaten Maros.
This study aimed to identify the forest^s ecosystem service that is the potential for healing forest spots. This study also improved baseline data of ecosystem service in the Educational Forest. We collected data on physical variables such as microclimate, vegetation density, and slope class from January to March 2021. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) compiled with the Sentinel-2A satellite images was used to analyze the vegetation density. The results showed that 23 ha out of the total area of Educational Forest were proper to become healing forest spots. This area was distributed in sixteen locations with varied areas ranged from 0.1-3.1 Ha, with the widest area up to 1.264 Ha.

Keywords: Forest potential, NDVI, microclimate

Topic: Ecosystem Services