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Characterizing Forest Cover Change in the Congo Basin from 1990 to 2000: Results from the first basin-wide, wall-to-wall mapping effort

Erik J Lindquist, South Dakota State University, erik.lindquist@sdstate.edu (Presenting)
Matthew C Hansen, South Dakota State University, matthew.hansen@sdstate.edu

This poster presents the results of an exhaustive, Landsat-derived forest cover and change characterization for the entire Congo River Basin for the time period from 1990 to 2000. 475 Landsat acquisitions were obtained for 100 unique path/row combinations and segregated by year into time one (1986 – 1996) and time two (>1996 – 2003 pre slc-off). For each path/row and each time period, a single cloud-free, radiometrically normalized composite was created using an automated, pixel-based mosaic method. Forest cover and change was characterized with a decision tree classification approach using static models and training data derived from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) standard Vegetation Continuous Fields (VCF) product. Results from decadal forest change mapping (DFCM) in the Congo Basin show a 1.7 percent decrease in forest cover from the 1990s to the 2000s epoch. This corresponds to a loss of 27,718 km2 of an original forested extent of 1.6 million km2 at a rate of 0.17 percent per year. Nearly 95 percent of this change took place within two kilometers of pre-existing non-forest. Protected areas were delineated and analyzed separately, as were regional conservation ‘landscapes’ as defined by the Central African Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE). Forest loss was much greater outside of the CARPE landscapes than within, 2.2 to 0.4 million hectares respectively. Protected areas lost a total of 0.1 million hectares of forest. Forest clearing ‘hot spots’ occurred in several locations across the basin to which CARPE landscapes and protected areas show varying impacts.


NASA Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Active Awards Represented by this Poster:

  • Award: NNX07AO57H
     

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