Woody vegetation and land cover changes in the Sahel of Mali (1967–2011)

Abstract

In the past 50 years, the Sahel has experienced significant tree- and land cover changes accelerated by human expansion and prolonged droughts during the 1970s and 1980s. This study uses remote sensing techniques, supplemented by ground-truth data to compare pre-drought woody vegetation and land cover with the situation in 2011. High resolution panchromatic Corona imagery of 1967 and multi-spectral RapidEye imagery of 2011 form the basis of this regional scaled study, which is focused on the Dogon Plateau and the Seno Plain in the Sahel zone of Mali. Object-based feature extraction and classifications are used to analyze the datasets and map land cover and woody vegetation changes over 44 years. Interviews add information about changes in species compositions. Results show a significant increase of cultivated land, a reduction of dense natural vegetation as well as an increase of trees on farmer's fields. Mean woody cover decreased in the plains (−4%) but is stable on the plateau (+1%) although stark spatial discrepancies exist. Species decline and encroachment of degraded land are observed. However, the direction of change is not always negative and a variety of spatial variations are shown. Although the impact of climate is obvious, we demonstrate that anthropogenic activities have been the main drivers of change.