Land Use Change in the Mezam Division of the North-West Province, Cameroon From Landsat Imageries (1988 And 2001)

Abstract

This study investigated land use change in the Mezam division of the Northwest part of Cameroon. Its main objective was to demonstrate the use of medium resolution but affordable imagery for land use classification. Data were obtained from satellite imageries (Landsat TM 1988 and ETM+ 2001), and the topographical map of the study area. Both materials were georeferenced to the same coordinate system of the study area and were subjected to Principal Component Analysis for image enhancement. Six landuse classes were identified: Bare Surface, Montane Forest, Water Body, Secondary Forest, Grassland, and Built-Up-Area. A total of 35 training sets were used 32 for 1988 and for 2001. Whereas the built up area and the vegetation areas were derived in vector format, the road network data set was overlaid on the classified images to evaluate the accessibility of the area for forest exploitation and other human activities. The classification accuracies for the two comparable years (1988 and 2001) are 93.75 and 88.57%, respectively. This fall within the range indicates a strong high accuracy and negligible errors. The study concluded that given the available technology, cost and scale of investigation, a medium resolution image will sufficiently be useful.

Keywords: Deforestation, fuel wood, land use, Landsat imagery, Northwest Cameroon.