Review and Combination of Recent Remote Sensing Based Products for Forest Cover Change Assessments in Cameroon

SUMMARY Two recent remote sensing derived products providing assessment of forest cover change in the Congo Basin for the last two decades were compared and combined to obtain estimates of forest cover change in Cameroon for the period 1990–2012. The intensity of deforestation in the whole region decreased from the 1990s to the 2000s. Forest loss is observed everywhere in Cameroon but present higher intensity nearby the Atlantic coast. The analysis of the spatial distribution of the forest loss in Cameroon reveals that an important part of the loss is happening outside the permanent and the non-permanent forest domain. The Landsat spatial resolution used in the two products allows us to capture change caused by agro-industrial exploitation as well as shifting cultivation, infrastructure and selective logging when the area affected is large enough. But it fails to monitor forest degradation and small scale deforestation events.