Characterizing Forest Cover Changes Based on Satellite Images cum Forest Dependents' Data

Abstract

While the reliable and consistent information on forests dynamic as well as communities living in their vicinities are fundamental to sustain their socioeconomic and environmental benefits, these information are lacking in Wad Al-Bashir Forest (WF) area that located in Sennar State of Sudan. Thus, this study assessed the land use/land cover (LU/LC) changes cum forests’ dependents needs (FDNs) as well as forestland-related-activities (FRAs) using geospatial techniques alongside key informant interview (KII) cum structured questionnaire, respectively. For assessing the LU/LC, Landsat images of the years 1985, 2001 and 2017 have been downloaded and analyzed using ArcMap 2015 and ERDAS 2015 software, where supervised classification was applied with GPS points verification. While the assessment of FDNs and FRAs has done by which 61 respondents and 5 key informants were questioned and interviewed through random and purposive sampling respectively, and subsequently, descriptive analysis was carried out using SPSS. Results of LU/LC have shown considerable changes during the two study periods, where 2001 made a considerable forest cover (72.2%) compared to 1985 and 2017 (63.8% and 58% respectively), whereas 2017 encompasses vast farmland area (38%) than 1985 and 2001 which have been driven by some FDNs and FRAs. The major FDNs were needs for energy sources, farmland, building materials, and animals fodder respectively, while the main FRAs were crop farming inside forestland, illegal trees cutting as well as uncontrolled grazing. Decisively, conducting a small scale LU/LC detection (like WF) will give a genuine status of forest cover as well as the real FDNs and FRAs of the peoples living in the vicinity of the forest areas, and hence, this study recommends this method for further studies especially for establishing a baseline for forest monitoring and policymaking purposes. Keywords: Land use, land cover, forests’ dependents needs, geospatial techniques, Wad Al-Bashir forest.