Protection status and national socio‐economic context shape land conversion in and around a key transboundary protected area complex in West Africa

• Published in: Remote sensing in ecology and conservation 2017-12, Vol.3 (4), p.190-201
• Main Authors: Schulte to Bühne, Henrike, Wegmann, Martin, Durant, Sarah M., Ransom, Chris, Ornellas, Paul, Grange, Sophie, Beatty, Hope, Pettorelli, Nathalie, Nagendra, Harini, Rocchini, Duccio
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Agricultural expansion; Agricultural land; Anthropogenic factors; Biodiversity; Biodiversity hot spots; Conventions; Conversion; Cooperation; Ecological monitoring; Ecosystems; Environmental economics; Heterogeneity; Hypotheses; Land conversion; Land cover; land cover classification; Natural vegetation; Population growth; Protected areas; protection status; Remote sensing; Rural populations; Spatial heterogeneity; transboundary protected areas; Vegetation; vegetation loss; WAP
• ISSN: 2056-3485; 2056-3485
• DOI: 10.1002/rse2.47

Transboundary cooperation is being promoted as an effective way to conserve biodiversity that straddles national borders. However, monitoring the ecological outcomes of these large‐scale endeavours is challenging, and as a result, the factors and processes likely to shape their effectiveness remain poorly identified and understood. To address this knowledge gap, we tested three hypotheses pertaining to natural vegetation loss across the W‐Arly‐Pendjari protected area complex, a key biodiversity hotspot in West Africa. Using a new methodology to compare land cover change across large remote areas where independent validation data is unevenly distributed across time, we demonstrate widespread agricultural expansion outside protected areas over the past 13 years. Protected areas with high protection status appear considerably more effective at preventing land conversion than other protected areas. We moreover report marked differences in cropland expansion rates between countries, which we suggest may be linked to differences in rural population growth. Altogether, our results suggest that there can be considerable spatial heterogeneity in anthropogenic pressure across transboundary protected area complexes and call for more comprehensive assessments that capitalize on the current availability of remote sensing information. We tested three hypotheses pertaining to natural vegetation loss across the W‐Arly‐Pendjari protected area complex, a key biodiversity hotspot in West Africa. By combining open source data with spectral change analyses and supervised classification algorithms, we quantify for the first time the ecological outcomes of an entire transboundary complex over more than a decade of transboundary cooperation. Our results suggest that there can be considerable spatial heterogeneity in anthropogenic pressure across transboundary protected area complexes, and we call for more comprehensive assessments that capitalize on the current availability of remote sensing information.