Tropentag, October 5 - 7, 2011 in Bonn "Development on the margin"

Spatiotemporal Dimensions of Vegetation Dynamic and its Relationship to Human Activities in the semi-Arid Zone of White Nile State, Sudan

¹University of Khartoum, Faculty of Forestry, Germany
²Technische Universität Dresden, Institute of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Germany

Abstract

Vegetation cover is one of the most important components of ecosystems, particularly of the dry zones (vulnerable land). This cover is always in a dynamic status throughout time and throughout place, and in the vulnerable zones particularly. It is responsible for the equilibrium of the environment, therefore it needs accurate monitoring and assessing of its dynamic and its relation to human activities such as the land use practices.
The study carried out aimed to map, to monitor, and to analyse the status (rate and trend) of the vegetation dynamics, and its relationship to human activities (different land use patterns) through spatial and temporal dimensionality in a semi-arid zone of the White Nile State (El Geteina area), Sudan. The synergism approach of remote sensing, ground truth and socio-economic data was mainly utilised for achieving the study objectives. Whereas the vegetation indices (NDVI and SAVI), hybrid classification approach-Mahalanobis distance classifier, and post classification (change detection and matrix) was done to analyse the satellite data images of MSS 1973, TM 1986, and ASTER 2009 (for 36 year). Through the analysis, the pre-processing and processing of data images fusing with ancillary data was done, to derive information using ERDAS IMAGINE and arcGIS.
The results depicted that the vegetation cover increased 0.093239 km² estimated with 0.007 km² annually between 1973 and 1986, and it decreased 22.911 km² estimated with 1.761 km² annually between 1986 and 2009. It was found that 3.19 km² of the vegetation cover converted to agricultural land and at the same time 9.54 km² of agricultural land converted into natural vegetation cover between 1973 and 1986, and 3.96 km² of the vegetation converted into agricultural land and 1.35 km² of the agricultural land to natural vegetation cover. So the results illustrate that a relationship between the vegetation dynamic and the human activities was obviously.

Keywords: Human activities, remote sensing, vegetation, White Nile State

Contact Address: Abdelnasir Ibrahim Ali Hano, University of Khartoum, Faculty of Forestry, Gerok str 38/0701, 01307 Dresden, Germany, e-mail: nasirhannogmail.com