Analysis of the Impact of Agriculture and Logging on Forest Habitat Structure in the Ankasa and Bia Conservation Area of Ghana

Description

George Ashiagbor and co-authors published this land-use study in 2024. Ghana's Ankasa and Bia conservation areas protect rainforest, but farmland presses at their edges. The team measured forty years of change using satellite images from 1980, 2000, and 2020, including a five-kilometer belt around each reserve. Images were sorted into forest, agriculture, and built-up land. Standard landscape metrics then tracked how the forest's shape changed, not just its size.

Forest cover fell by about sixteen percent around Ankasa and fourteen percent around Bia. Farming did not invade the reserves themselves; cocoa expansion in the surrounding belt drove the loss. The remaining forest broke into smaller, more isolated patches with more edge exposed. Connectivity between patches, vital for wildlife movement, declined. The authors recommend ecological restoration in the buffer belt. They highlight cocoa agroforestry, growing cocoa under shade trees, as a way to stitch habitat back together while keeping farm incomes.

Catalog record

Source: https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC11637781