Abstract
The exploitation of natural resources for timber production, fuelwood use and conversion to agricultural land is increasing to such an extent that the sustainable use of many areas of the world is in doubt. This paper examines three decades of freely available Landsat satellite images of the northeastern part of Nigeria using a supervised classification based technique to create maps of vegetation change in Yobe State. The maps are then used to examine the temporal and spatial aspects of changes which have occurred in the context of previous evidence and literature. The results indicate that the vegetation of the area has drastically reduced since the 1970’s. However, as this study shows, the pattern of these changes is complicated and cannot be explained by any single physical or anthropogenic causal factor. Similarly, evidence from ground truthing investigation indicates the importance of fuelwood collection to the deforestation process within the region. This article shows the value of an existing remote sensing and image processing methodology for the assessment of vegetation change in developing countries in relation to the sustainable management of natural resources. The study also discusses the overall change within the study area and discusses several potential causative factors of the observed patterns of change.
Highlights
Sustainable natural resource management is imperative if we are to maintain the natural resource base for future generations
It should be noted the concept of deforestation is still under debate [3] with regards to the “usage of the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO)’s definition of the term forest, which is based on a commercial definition that includes both natural forests and forestry plantations as long as they satisfy the quantitative criteria of areas with over 10 percent tree cover and no agricultural activity” ([21] p. 1607)
The results reveal that about 44.4% of the study area was covered with vegetation in 1978, but this had reduced to about 27.5% in 2005
Summary
Sustainable natural resource management is imperative if we are to maintain the natural resource base for future generations. Many natural resources are being depleted faster than it is possible for nature to replenish these (see for example [1,2]). With regard to large areas of vegetation cover, remote sensing provides an invaluable tool in the management and assessment of natural resources (see for example [3,4]). Remote sensing is a valuable tool in the study of vegetation cover change over large areas. Platforms such as the Landsat satellite programme offer freely available, multispectral data which can be analyzed to examine broader vegetation change. Analysis of patterns and rates of change may provide invaluable information for environmental managers and policy makers
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