Abstract
This study aims at identifying changes in land use composition, structure and distribution in PNNT Community Forest in the Center Region of Cameroon, from 2001 to 2020 and to investigate the impact of the search for livelihoods on the change. Obtained results revealed that there are four major land uses in the PNNT community forest; Moist evergreen forest, degraded forest, savanna and bare soils. Land use change analysis indicated that, the surface area covered by moist evergreen forest reduced by 5% while that of savanna reduced by 15.4% from 2001 to 2020. The findings indicated that 255,87 hectares of moist evergreen forest was lost between 2001 and 2020; an average of 13.47 hectares per year. The surface area of savanna reduced significantly from 1919.28 hectares in 2001, 1658.39 hectares in 2011 and to 1124,91 hectares in 2020. Results further revealed a substantial increase in the surface area of bare soil by 17% and degraded forest by 3.4% over 19 years. The total surface area of degraded forest increased by 174.4 hectares from 2001 to 2020. The land use with the most significant positive change was bare soils which increased from 396.61 hectares in 2001 to 1272.45 in 2020; a global increase of 875.84 hectares. Agricultural expansion, increased logging and harvesting of non-timber forest were identified as drivers of land use change in the community forest.
Highlights
On a global scale, anthropogenic activities such as agriculture, industry and transport underlined with various socio-economic, political and institutional factors have resulted in land use changes [1]
From 2001 to 2020 the surface area of moist evergreen forest reduced by 5%, savanna by 15.4% while degraded forest increased by 3.4% and bare soil increased by 17% of the total land cover (Table 4)
There was a substantial reduction in the surface area of moist evergreen forest and savanna land uses in the PNNT
Summary
Anthropogenic activities such as agriculture, industry and transport underlined with various socio-economic, political and institutional factors have resulted in land use changes [1]. Land use change driven by human activities and natural factors resulted in the global loss of native biodiversity and the alteration of ecological processes and services across different ecosystems [2]. About 20% of the global population depends on forests for employment, forest products livelihoods and incomes [5,6,7,8]. About 83% of the extreme poor living in developing countries depend on forest resources for all or part of their livelihoods [9, 8]. In Cameroon, the forest sector contributes to about 2.8% of the GDP
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