Abstract:
Forest ecosystems in West Africa including Ghana has a lot of endowments,
for instance wood and non-wood forest products, with regulating
services like climate, for economic development and sustainable
livelihoods. Ghana's forest and woodland resources provide diverse
economic products and environmental services. However,
anthropogenic activities such as agriculture, mining, deforestation
and construction and other modification of the landscape have had an
intense effect on the natural environment. Since land-use practices
can dramatically affect soil condition as well as water quality and
supply, Ghana faces difficult choices if it is to support rational and
optimal use of the remaining forest resource. The study hopes therefore
to drum home the major changes in the forest cover of the forest savannah
transitional zone of Ghana over the past two decades
(1990-2013), its causes and impact and propose approaches to
address the seated/ or root cause of the problems using multitemporal
Remote Sensing (RS) data and Geographic Information
System (GIS) based techniques. The key findings include a big decline
in forest and moreover, there has been a big change in the state of
forest between 20 years ago and now. And over 80% of respondents
believe that the main cause of the deterioration of the forest is
anthropogenic in nature. It is proposed that effective forest and
sustainable environmental friendly policies should be in place
through inclusive participatory stakeholders' planning.