Landsat Imagery Monitoring and Quantification of the Land Cover Changes in the Kan Watershed at Tiébissou (Center of Côte d'Ivoire)

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to characterize and quantify the evolution and changes in land cover of the Kan watershed at Tiébissou between 1988 and 2015. It is based on the exploitation of Landsat 5 TM and Landsat 8 OLI images, submitted to a string of processing from ENVI 4.5, ARCGIS 10.0 and EXCEL 2010. Diachronic land cover analysis revealed six classes in the Kan watershed: water bodies, habitats, farming, dense forest, degraded forest and savannah. From 1988 to 2015, dense forest, habitats and farming grew respectively by 6.20%, 1.80% and 0.52% while savannah and degraded forest shrank by 6.83% and 1.62% respectively. Water bodies remained virtually stable. The largest changes occurred in the savannah (36.11%) while the least important changes were in the water bodies (0.20%). Degraded forest, dense forest, farming and habitats changed by 26.31%, 22.30%, 11.77% and 3.32% respectively. Dramatic changes have also occurred within each land cover classes at varying proportions.