Detection of forest reserve incursion in south-western Nigeria from a combination of multi-date aerial photographs and high resolution satellite imagery

Abstract

Forest reserves were established in Nigeria to serve as repositories of the primary habitats of the forest ecosystems.However, with increasing population pressure and the need to feed the population, the peasant farmers are already making incursion into these reserves. This phenomenon has not attracted the serious attention of relevant government establishments, perhaps because they do not know the extent of the incursion in order to appreciate the magnitude of the danger it poses to the environment at large. This paper is therefore an attempt to quantify the extent of biotic degradation consequent upon the incursion. The study makes use of aerial photos and SPOT XS imagery and demonstrates the importance of combination of the two data sources to environmental monitoring in a country like Nigeria, with a poor geo-information/data bank.