Contribution of Remote Sensing in The Study of The Spatio-Temporal Dynamics of Classified Forests: Case of The Classified Forest of Irobo (Southern Ivory Coast)

Abstract : This study was carried out in the south of the Ivory Coast as part of our master’s thesis. This study aims to highlight the improvement in knowledge on the phenomenon of degradation in the Irobo classified forest and to provide managers with essential elements for the establishment of a sustainable forest management policy. Concretely, it was a question of (1) characterizing the different types of land use of the Irobo classified forest, (2) mapping the vegetation cover of the classified forest of Irobo from the Landsat images of 1988, 2005 and 2020, (3) evaluating the forest dynamics between 1988 and 2020. To this end, the characterization of the types of land use, the mapping of the dynamics and the evaluation of the forest dynamics between 1988 and 2020 were carried out using cartographic methods on the one hand and area calculations on the other. The results indicate that there are nine types of land use. These are forests, reforestation plots, perennial crops, annual crops, fallows, bare soils and habitats. Regarding the assessment of forest dynamics, it appears that forest cover has lost 11,993.3 ha between 1988 and 2020, which means a decrease of 2.07% per year in favour of agricultural holdings (26,838.9 ha in 2020).