Land use/land cover patterns and challenges to sustainable management of the Mono transboundary biosphere reserve between Togo and Benin, West Africa

Abstract

The Mono Transboundary Biosphere Reserve (RBTM) has significant resources but faces many threats that lead to habitat fragmentation and reduction of ecosystem services. This study, based on satellite image analysis and processing, was carried out to establish the baseline of land cover and land use status and to analyze their dynamics over the period 1986 to 2015. The baseline of land cover established six categories of land use including wetlands (45.11%), mosaic crops/fallow (25.99%), savannas (17.04%), plantation (5.50%), agglomeration/bare soil (4.38%) and dense forest (1.98%). The analysis of land use dynamics showed a regression for wetlands (-23%), savannas (-16.06%) and dense forest (-7.60%). On the contrary, occupations such as mosaic crops/fallow land, urban agglomerations/bare soil and plantation increase in area estimated at respectively 128.64%, 93.94% and 45.23%. These results are of interest to stakeholders who assess decisions affecting the use of natural resources and provide environmental information essential for applications ranging from land-use planning, forest cover monitoring and the production of environmental statistics.

Keywords: Land use, baseline, spatial dynamics, environmental statistics, ecological monitoring.