Contribution of Remote Sensing for Monitoring Tapia Sclerophyll Forests (Uapaca Bojeri), Endemic Species of Madagascar, Case of the Tapia Forest of Itasy

Abstract

Spatio-temporal land cover monitoring was analyzed using 2000 and 2019 remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) Landsat images, in the sclerophyll forest area of the Itasy region. The objective of this research is to analyse the dynamics of land cover between 2000 and 2019, and to determine the factors of degradation of plant cover in this area. Socio-economic surveys were carried out in the municipalities of Arivonimamo II and Soamahamanina. The Maximum Likelihood Supervised Classification was applied to achieve Landsat image processing. Sclerophyll forests are down 29.59% in terms of area. On the other hand, shrub savannahs experienced a slight reduction of 8.75% while crops and bare soils showed an increase of 207.86% of their area, three times their initial area in 2000. Population growth, agriculture and the practice of wood energy are the three main factors of degradation of sclerophyll forests and its periphery.