Remote Sensing and GIS Analysis of Deforestation and Desertification in Central Highland and Eastern Region of Eritrea (1972-2014)
Keywords:
deforestation and desertification, Eritrea, Landsat data, supervised classificationAbstract
The integration of remote sensing technology (RST) and geographical information system (GIS) are suitable to extract the dynamic change of forest and desert land cover in arid and semi-arid regions. In this study, we used Landsat data to quantify forest and desert cover change in central highland and eastern region of Eritrea (1972-2014). Each satellite image was classified into three land cover categories, and post-classification was implemented to analyze and interpret change detections. The study demonstrated that the average value of the overall accuracy and the kappa statistics was 98.45% and 97.40%, respectively, and about 8.38% and 28.21% of the study area was covered by forest and desert, respectively, in 1972 and 2014. In 2014, about 2.42% of the total forest and about 4.04% of the total arable land cover was lost, respectively, due to deforestation and desertification. The highest annual rate of deforestation (15.23km2y-1) and desertification (44.38km2y-1) were recorded between 1972 and 1985, however, the trend of annual rate of deforestation and desertification was gradually decreasing. Therefore, deforestation and desertification were serious problems in Eritrea, and climate change such as rainfall variability and drought, and human activities are might be the main factors.
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