Three Possible Future Courses for the SassandraDagbégo Ramsar Site (Côte d’Ivoire): Prospective Modelling and Implications for Restoration

The Sassandra-Dagbégo Ramsar Site, along the coast in southwestern Côte d’Ivoire, is a wetland of major ecological importance because of its forest ecosystems, associated wetlands, and hydrological regulation functions. This area is subject to increasingly intense anthropogenic pressures in connection with the exploitation of forest resources and local populations’ needs for food and well-being, resulting in numerous spatial dynamics. In this line, prospective modeling appears to be an essential tool to understand these dynamics and anticipate possible future courses of the SassandraDagbégo complex. This study aims at improving knowledge of changes that occur within the wetland by analyzing historical spatial dynamics and simulating future use of land and land-cover patterns up to 2040. So, this study is based on a multi-temporal analysis of Landsat imagery that covers the period 2015-2025, combined with Geographic Information System tools and predictive modeling of three scenarios based on Markov chains. The retrospective analysis results show a decreas in the formations of forest to the order of croplands and other anthropized areas. The projections of 2040 significantly show differentiated directions, presenting an increasing artificialization as if nothing has happened, considerably retracteted by conservation and restoration policies. The restoration scenario stands out through the recovery of the mangrove.