Mapping of the kabo river forest reserve in Ghana towards community-based fire management

Abstract

Post-fire restoration and vegetation management in a fire-prone area, where 'no burning' practice is a policy, could subsequently result in severe burning when fuel-load builds up. In line with the Ghana National Wildfire Management Policy objectives, that seek to promote basic and applied user-focused research in wildfire management [Section 3.3 (iv)], and the suggested strategies for effective prevention and control [Section 3.4.1 (Bullet 5 & 6)], an analog map of portions of the Kabo River Forest Reserve (KRFR) in the Kadjebi District of the Volta Region was transformed into digital spatial data, using Landsat ETM+ December 2000 satellite imagery. With available ground data sets, the December 2000 pictorial result of processed Landsat ETM+ imagery was corroborated with plant species diversity indices for systematic vegetation analysis to provide the necessary baseline for community-based fire management. The resultant vegetation-type maps derived is used to provide a spectral signature guide on potential ground areas likely to suffer wildfire occurrences, hence strategizing for fire-fighting during the dry season. It is recommended that the quality of other sites of the KRFR and seriously degraded forest reserves in Ghana be assessed, using similar methodological approach, to enable numerous fireprone forest sites to be consistently monitored and compared through time or between sites/treatments, if the relationship between future fire and restoration success has to be measured.