Abstract
The island of Madagascar has a unique biodiversity, mainly located in the tropical forests of the island. This biodiversity is highly threatened by anthropogenic deforestation. Existing historical forest maps at national level are scattered and have substantial gaps which prevent an exhaustive assessment of long-term deforestation trends in Madagascar. In this study, we combined historical national forest cover maps (covering the period 1953–2000) with a recent global annual tree cover loss dataset (2001–2014) to look at six decades of deforestation and forest fragmentation in Madagascar (from 1953 to 2014). We produced new forest cover maps at 30 m resolution for the year 1990 and annually from 2000 to 2014 over the full territory of Madagascar. We estimated that Madagascar has lost 44% of its natural forest cover over the period 1953–2014 (including 37% over the period 1973–2014). Natural forests cover 8.9 Mha in 2014 (15% of the national territory) and include 4.4 Mha (50%) of moist forests, 2.6 Mha (29%) of dry forests, 1.7 Mha of spiny forests (19%) and 177 000 ha (2%) of mangroves. Since 2005, the annual deforestation rate has progressively increased in Madagascar to reach 99 000 ha/yr during 2010–2014 (corresponding to a rate of 1.1%/yr). Around half of the forest (46%) is now located at less than 100 m from the forest edge. Our approach could be replicated to other developing countries with tropical forest. Accurate forest cover change maps can be used to assess the effectiveness of past and current conservation programs and implement new strategies for the future. In particular, forest maps and estimates can be used in the REDD+ framework which aims at “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation” and for optimizing the current protected area network.
Highlights
Separated from the African continent and the Indian plate about 165 and 88 million years ago respectively (Ali and Aitchison, 2008), the flora and fauna of Madagascar followed its own evolutionary path
Most of the biodiversity in Madagascar is concentrated in the tropical forests of the island which can be divided into four types: the moist forest in the East, the dry forest in the West, the spiny forest in the South and the mangroves on the West coast (Vieilledent et al, 2016)
In 2014 the remaining 8.9 Mha of natural forest were distributed as follow: 4.4 Mha of moist forest (50% of total forest cover), 2.6 Mha of dry forest (29%), 1.7 Mha of spiny forest (19%) and 0.18 Mha (2%) of mangrove forest (Fig. 1 and Table 2)
Summary
Separated from the African continent and the Indian plate about 165 and 88 million years ago respectively (Ali and Aitchison, 2008), the flora and fauna of Madagascar followed its own evolutionary path. Most of the biodiversity in Madagascar is concentrated in the tropical forests of the island which can be divided into four types: the moist forest in the East, the dry forest in the West, the spiny forest in the South and the mangroves on the West coast (Vieilledent et al, 2016). This unparalleled biodiversity is severely threatened by deforestation (Harper et al, 2007; Vieilledent et al, 2013) associated with human activities such as slash-and-burn agriculture and pasture (Scales, 2011). Simple time-series of forest cover estimates, such as those provided by the FAO Forest Resource Assessment report (Keenan et al, 2015) are not sufficient
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