TITLE:
Changing Vegetation Patterns in Yobe State Nigeria: An Analysis of the Rates of Change, Potential Causes and the Implications for Sustainable Resource Management
AUTHORS:
Ali I. Naibbi, Brian Baily, Richard G. Healey, Peter Collier
KEYWORDS:
Savanna Vegetation; Yobe State; Fuelwood; Remote Sensing; Land Cover; Deforestation; Sustainable Management
JOURNAL NAME:
International Journal of Geosciences,
Vol.5 No.1,
January
21,
2014
ABSTRACT:
The exploitation of natural resources for timber
production, fuelwood use and conversion to agricultural land is increasing to
such an extent that the sustainable use of many areas of the world is in doubt.
This paper examines three decades of freely available Landsat satellite images
of the northeastern part of Nigeria using a supervised classification based
technique to create maps of vegetation change in Yobe State. The maps are then
used to examine the temporal and spatial aspects of changes which have occurred
in the context of previous evidence and literature. The results indicate that
the vegetation of the area has drastically reduced since the 1970’s. However,
as this study shows, the pattern of these changes is complicated and cannot be
explained by any single physical or anthropogenic causal factor. Similarly,
evidence from ground truthing investigation indicates the importance of
fuelwood collection to the deforestation process within the region. This
article shows the value of an existing remote sensing and image processing
methodology for the assessment of vegetation change in developing countries in
relation to the sustainable management of natural resources. The study also
discusses the overall change within the study area and discusses several
potential causative factors of the observed patterns of change.