Fabing, Aline
GEOINFORMATION FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
SPATIAL AND STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF DEFORESTATION IN AN URBAN AREA SINCE
1950: THE POINTE-NOIRE CASE STUDY (R. OF CONGO)
Aline FABING*, Marc SIMARD**, Philippe MAYAUX***
*CEREG, University of Strasbourg, France
fabing@geographie.u-strasbg.fr
**TPL, NASA, LOS ANGELES
simard(@innu.jpl.nasa. gov
*** A frica Coordinator - TREES Project
Global Vegetation Monitoring Unit - Space Applications Institute
DG Joint Research Centre - European Commission, Ispra (VA); Italy
philippe. mavaux@jre.it
Working Group C#/G#
KEY WORDS: Photogrammetry, remote sensing, GIS, modelisation, sustainable development, urbanisation, Congo,
deforestation risks, predictability.
ABSTRACT
Nowadays several discussions exist about the dramatic expansion of environmental degradation and the solution
considered is sustainable development. This requires a great knowledge of the ecosystem pattern, processes and
predictability as well as information about the relationship between environmental and human factors. It needs to link
spatial pattern and ecological processes at broad spatial and temporal scales. In this purpose, one way is to identify and
quantify the environmental and anthropological factors in order to assess the relationship between population and
natural forest resources, through the establishment of a physical as well as a human factor balance. The emphasis has
been placed on a strategic method in order to improve environmental information and to provide a reliable support for
natural resources management. This was done by establishing maps predicting deforestation risks. The predicted
African urban expansion for the next decade as well as the emergency and renewed interest in the environmental
problematic confer a real significance to this paper. The results permit us to know where natural forest transgresses and
in what quantities in six characteristic training zones. How much of this forest has disappeared since 1950 under
population and urban pressures and what is the nature of these human pressures? This analysis is required to extrapolate
information across scales (temporal and spatial) in order to provide, through dynamic predictive modelling,
deforestation predictability support for reasonable landscape management.
RESUME
L'étude dont il est question ici est étroitement liée, à l'échelle globale, au probléme de dégradation de l'environnement
et de gestion durable. Elle répond à un besoin important de connaissances à l'échelle actuelle du fonctionnement des
écosystémes ainsi que des processus qui lui sont inhérents. Les objectifs de ce travail ont été d'identifier et de mesurer
les différents facteurs environnementaux et anthropiques pour pouvoir dresser un bilan des interrelations entre la
population et la ressource forestiére naturelle. En établissant, d'une part, le bilan spatial des formations naturelles et,
d'autre part, le bilan des facteurs anthropiques. Il s'agit d'une approche stratégique pour améliorer l'analyse des
informations environnementales et proposer un support fiable pour une meilleure gestion du milieu forestier. Elle
consiste en l'occurrence à l'établissement d'une carte des risques de dégradation forestiére. Pour cela, on a mis à
contribution l'outil télédétection (traitement d'images radars (JERS) et de photographies aériennes), systéme
d'information géographique, modélisation, enquétes et vérification terrain. Les résultats obtenus nous permettent de
localiser et de quantifier la transgression forestiére ainsi que la déforestation dans six zones tests sur le littoral congolais
dans le but fournir un modéle dynamique de prédiction des risques de déforestation.
420 International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXIII, Part B7. Amsterdam 2000.
