Assessment of change in vegetative /forest cover of forest-savannah transitional zone in Ghana between 1990 - 2013 using remote sensing and GIS.

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.