Abstract
Sacred natural sites can be defined as any place in nature possessing a unique spiritual significance to peoples and communities. This chapter examines land cover change in a sacred forest in Ghana to test the hypothesis that designation of a landscape as sacred reduces its forest cover loss over time when compared to neighboring non-sacred forest. Using satellite imagery from 2000, 2012, 2015, and 2017, we generated land cover classification change maps and found that the Goviefe Todzi sacred forest did experience less closed forest loss compared to the surrounding forest area. A visit to the sacred forest in 2018 provided a deeper understanding of the local community’s relationship with the forest and their involvement with preserving the forest through traditional spiritual beliefs.
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