Version 1
: Received: 17 February 2020 / Approved: 18 February 2020 / Online: 18 February 2020 (10:54:53 CET)
How to cite:
Mesmin, T.; Frédéric, S.; Eric, V.; Philippes, M.F.; Rose, N.M.; Ismaël, I.; Frédéric Sédric, T. Land Use and Land Cover Changes in the Centre Region of Cameroon. Preprints2020, 2020020264
Mesmin, T.; Frédéric, S.; Eric, V.; Philippes, M.F.; Rose, N.M.; Ismaël, I.; Frédéric Sédric, T. Land Use and Land Cover Changes in the Centre Region of Cameroon. Preprints 2020, 2020020264
Mesmin, T.; Frédéric, S.; Eric, V.; Philippes, M.F.; Rose, N.M.; Ismaël, I.; Frédéric Sédric, T. Land Use and Land Cover Changes in the Centre Region of Cameroon. Preprints2020, 2020020264
APA Style
Mesmin, T., Frédéric, S., Eric, V., Philippes, M.F., Rose, N.M., Ismaël, I., & Frédéric Sédric, T. (2020). Land Use and Land Cover Changes in the Centre Region of Cameroon. Preprints. https://doi.org/
Chicago/Turabian Style
Mesmin, T., Issan Ismaël and Tchoumbou Frédéric Sédric. 2020 "Land Use and Land Cover Changes in the Centre Region of Cameroon" Preprints. https://doi.org/
Abstract
Cameroon territory is experiencing significant land use and land cover (LULC) changes since its independence in 1960. But the main relevant impacts are recorded since 1990 due to intensification of agricultural activities and urbanization. LULC effects and dynamics vary from one region to another according to the type of vegetation cover and activities. Using remote sensing, GIS and subsidiary data, this paper attempted to model the land use and land cover (LULC) change in the Centre Region of Cameroon that host Yaoundé metropolis. The rapid expansion of the city of Yaoundé drives to the land conversion with farmland intensification and forest depletion accelerating the rate at which land use and land cover (LULC) transformations take place. This study aims at assessing the impacts of both agriculture and urbanization on the LULC change in the Centre Region of Cameroon. A detailed LULC map from MAPBOX high resolution images and three LULC maps were produced from Landsat TM-OLI images (1984-2015). A maximum likelihood classification techniques using ERDAS Imagine, showed forest decline with a total loss of 54% in thirty years. Also, Landsat and MAPBOX images to which we added 1951 aerial photograph and SPOT 6 (2006) were used to analyse urban growth in the city of Yaoundé. The results show a remarkable urban spatial spread of the metropolis between 1951 and 2015, with a peak in 2000. Images processing enabled us to analyse the long term dynamics of LULC change since the 1950s in this Region using ArcGIS & QGIS software’s. Based on this dynamic, a LULC projection map was produced using Markov model on IDRISI Selva, demonstrating the decrease of the dense forest (45% in 2015 to 0.25% in 2050). It was estimated that by 2050, the entire dense forest can be depleted if nothing is done, while only 12.67% of the secondary forest would remain in the Region. Such a projected map is very useful to decision makers for council development and urban planning. This effective forest depletion ties with the hypothesis that urbanization of Yaoundé and its secondary surrounding satellite cities (within a radius of 30-100km) is a veritable driving force of deforestation.
Keywords
agricultural activities; central region; forest cover depletion; LULC; urbanization
Subject
Social Sciences, Geography, Planning and Development
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
