HR: 1330h
AN: B42A-0943    [PDF]
TI: Land Use Land Cover Change in the Albertine Region of Uganda
AU: * Laporte, N
EM: nlaporte@whrc.org
AF: Woods Hole Research Center, PO Box 296, Woods Hole, MA 02543-0296 United States
AU: Plumptre, A
EM: aplumptre@wcs.org
AF: Wildlife Conservation Society, Albertine Rift Programme, Kampala, 7487 Uganda
AU: Goetz, S J
EM: sgoetz@whrc.org
AF: Woods Hole Research Center, PO Box 296, Woods Hole, MA 02543-0296 United States
AB: Monitoring threats to protected areas and species is a major challenge for the conservation community. The Albertine Rift region is a hot spot of biodiversity with many endemic vertebrates and plant species. Most of forests east of the Albertine (Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi) are, however, highly fragmented and human population densities are some of the highest of Africa. In this study, we used a series of Landsat images to provide a quantitative assessment of forest loss between the 1980s to year 2000 for the protected areas in the Western Uganda. In this region, monitoring forest conversion to agricultural land and modeling future threats for the protected areas system are important to the maintenance of wildlife populations. By combining remote sensing monitoring techniques with traditional field surveys, it becomes easier to monitor and manage extensive protected area systems. Most of the forest loss (deforestation) was located outside the official protected area limits, indicating that active deforestation during this period is mainly located on non protected lands. The largest forest loss was located in the north around Bugoma, Budonga and Kagombe Forest Reserves and is associated with large scale farming and mechanized logging.
DE: 0400 Biogeosciences
DE: 1640 Remote sensing
DE: 1694 Instruments and techniques
DE: 1699 General or miscellaneous
SC: Biogeosciences [B]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting