Monitoring of Residual Forest Ecosystems Dynamics in the Mono Biosphere Reserve (Southeast Togo)

Abstract

The forest ecosystems of the Lacs 2 commune (South-East, Togo) are undergoing severe degradation, which has not yet been documented. This study is carried out in order to assess and quantify the spatio-temporal dynamics of residual forests and to identify the determinants of deforestation in South East Togo. The methodological approach is based on the use of historical aerial photographs from 1976 and drone images from 2019 in addition to field investigations. Several spatial structure indices were also calculated in order to quantify the fragmentation of classes and of the forest landscape. The results show that the forest landscape is changing. The classes of forests, plantations and palm groves show an annual rate of decline of 7.5%, 0.8% and 9.4% respectively while the classes of savannahs, agglomerations, surface water and swamps increased by 16.4%, 0.4%, 0.7% and 0.1%. The results also reveal a high fragmentation within the forest, plantation, surface water and swamp class and moderate fragmentation for the savannah and palm trees classes. At the landscape level, the savannah class is dominant by more than 70%, thus making the landscape little diversified from an ecological point of view. The main driver of deforestation in the study area remains shifting slash-and-burn agriculture. It is accentuated by the establishment of perennial oil palm crops, which has influenced the annual deforestation rate by 0.72%.