Reconciling Landscape Fragmentation and Hippopotamuses Population Decrease in Virunga National Park Wetland

Madeleine Udahogora,Lamek Nahayo,Richard Mindje,Patient Mindje,Zhaoping Yang,Vincent Nzabarinda,Anathalie Nyirarwasa

doi:10.4236/gep.2020.812004

Madeleine Udahogora, Lamek Nahayo + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.4236/gep.2020.812004

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Abstract

Wetlands have been noted to be beneficial worldwide. Despite wetlands being a natural asset that is of great significance to the human community, they are threatened by human and natural events. In Virunga National Park (VNP) wetlands are the habitat of Hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius) which are among the animal species threatened by extinction in VNP since the past few decades. As shown by the last studies the number of Hippos population declined for 96% for the period of less than 40 years. This study evaluated landscape fragmentation status and its implication on the decline of the hippos population in VNP wetland for the period from 1990 to 2018. This study’s land cover data was obtained using remote sensing techniques with the help of software package ERDAS IMAGINE v16.6 and ArcGIS v10.3. It was mapped and classified using the maximum likelihood supervised classification technique. The landscape was classified into seven classes, which included Cropland, Forest, grassland, wetland, scrubland, bare area, and water. Satellite data (Landsat) was used to evaluate NDVI and NDWI and finally the landscape patterns in the study were analyzed using Fragstats 4.2, which was also used to calculate landscape indices for the respective periods. The results obtained from the LULC, NDVI, NDWI and the landscape metrics showed that during the period of our study the VNP wetland was fragmented. A strong negative correlation between the number of hippos and the wetland’s LFI (Landscape Fragmentation Index) values showed that wetland fragmentation was one of the reasons of the decline of Hippos in the park.

Highlights

According to a report published by Assessment (2005), wetlands have been noted to be beneficial worldwide, and their advantages include but not limited to mitigating erosion and purifying water
In Virunga National Park (VNP) wetlands are the habitat of Hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius) which are among the animal species threatened by extinction in VNP since the past few decades
The obtained results ran parallel to that of the study conducted by Orimoloye et al (2019), which stated that wetland depletion was observed in zones with low NDWI while slight or no shrinkage of wetland was observed in areas with high NDWI (Figure 5)

Summary

Introduction

According to a report published by Assessment (2005), wetlands have been noted to be beneficial worldwide, and their advantages include but not limited to mitigating erosion and purifying water. Wetlands in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) cover approximately 440,000 km or 19.2% of the country’s total area and offer habitat to hundred fauna species (Bwangoy et al, 2013). They are threatened by degradation, illegal logging, excessive fishing, poaching, the lack of integrated management plans, the weakness of monitoring systems, the delay in implementing the Ramsar vision, and other problems related to the gaps in knowledge and protection of certain aquatic and wetland habitats and their biodiversity (Anon, n.d.). A report published by Orimoloye et al (2020) indicates that the wetlands’ degradation calls for measures to be put in place for assessing and monitoring wetlands

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