Monitoring Forest Cover Change and Fragmentation Using Remote Sensing and Landscape Metrics in Nyungwe-Kibira Park
Open Access
- 1 January 2016
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Scientific Research Publishing, Inc. in Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection
- Vol. 04 (11), 13-33
- https://doi.org/10.4236/gep.2016.411003
Abstract
The objective of this study was to evaluate forest cover change and forest degradation in Nyungwe-Kibira Park, a natural reserve straddling Rwanda and Burundi from 1986 to 2015. Landsat TM, ETM+ and 8OLI images of 30 m spatial resolution were used as primary datasets. Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques were used for forest cover mapping and landscape metrics were calculated by using FRAGSTATS software. Classification and change analysis of forest cover type and landscape patterns analysis were carried out. In addition, to analyze the correlated external disturbances, the buffer zone of 5 Km was delineated outside the boundary of Nyungwe-Kibira Park. The results revealed that in among 5 land cover classes considered within the Park, the dominant one was dense forest class covering over 70% of the entire Park area while in the buffer zone cultivated and open land dominated at over 90% between the years 1986 and 2015. Change detection highlighted that within Nyungwe-Kibira forest, approximately 0.27% (4.97 Km2) of forest cover was cleared while 0.07% (1.22 Km2) was regenerated annually. In the buffer zone, the annual cleared forest cover was about 0.76% (13.02 Km2). The five landscape indices chosen at class level indicated a considerable fragmentation of forest inside the Park and the highest fragmentation in the buffer zone. Indeed, these results shed a bleak image over the future of the Nyungwe-Kibira forest that should be helpful for the policy-makers and managers of these natural parks to establish adequate policies to mitigate the forest loss and degradation by implementing quick and effective solutions.Keywords
This publication has 30 references indexed in Scilit:
- Carbon emissions and the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation in the tropicsCurrent Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 2012
- Landscapes as continuous entities: forest disturbance and recovery in the Albertine Rift landscapeLandscape Ecology, 2011
- Large mammal population declines in Africa’s protected areasBiological Conservation, 2010
- Land cover change assessment using decision trees, support vector machines and maximum likelihood classification algorithmsInternational Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 2010
- Spatial pattern analysis of land cover change trajectories in Tarim Basin, northwest ChinaInternational Journal of Remote Sensing, 2008
- SRTM vs ASTER elevation products. Comparison for two regions in Crete, GreeceInternational Journal of Remote Sensing, 2006
- Assessing the suitability of community-based management for the Nyungwe Forest Reserve, RwandaForest Policy and Economics, 2006
- INCREASING ISOLATION OF PROTECTED AREAS IN TROPICAL FORESTS OVER THE PAST TWENTY YEARSEcological Applications, 2005
- Forest Dependency and its Implications for Protected Areas Management: A Case Study From the Nyungwe Forest Reserve, RwandaScandinavian Journal of Forest Research, 2004
- Standardizing the calculation of the annual rate of deforestationForest Ecology and Management, 2003