Woods Hole Research Center

Sangha Tri-National Park, Congo, Cameroon, DRC

Selective tree felling

Until the 1960s, northern Congo was home to a vast, unfragmented tract of tropical rainforest where human activity was dominated by hunting-gathering and swidden agriculture. Today, industrial logging is the most prominent land use in the area. Over 90% of the forest area is in logging concessions. The drastic modification of land use in a relatively short period of time has engendered rapid changes in this remote part of Central Africa.

Forest people of Northern Congo

In the early 1990s, international conservation efforts culminated in the establishment of a complex of international protected areas, including the Dzanga-Ndoki National Park and the Dzonga-Sangha Forest Reserve in the Central African Republic (1990), the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo (1993), and Lake Lobeké National Park in Cameroon (2001). In 2003, The Congo Basin Forest Partnership incorporated these four parks into the Tri-National Park, one of eleven landscapes of conservation priority in Central Africa.

Since 2001, the INFORMS project has been working in collaboration with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS-Congo), the Congolaise Industrielle des Bois (CIB), and the Congolese Ministry of Forest Economy and Environment (MEFE) to map forest types and assess land-cover changes in the northern Congo.

Threats to Conservation

Although parts of the Tri-National Park complex have been logged in the past, the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park remains pristine and is only accessible by foot. However, the park is now almost completely surrounded by active timber concessions. The rate of large-scale industrial logging in the northern Congo has accelerated significantly since its inception in 1930. Although the nature of timber harvest in the region is selective, its negative impacts on the forest are alarming, threatening forest composition and ecosystem function.

Pressure on natural resources increases as the population of the region grows due to employment opportunities in logging. Logging roads provide access to previously forested areas where land is cleared around settlements for agriculture. Hunting and fishing penetrates further into the forest interior, as does the use of non-timber forest products. The most damaging activities like poaching of protected fauna (e.g. for ivory) and commercial hunting of bush meat for export, continue relatively unabated. Without proper management, the sustainability of both timber and non-timber forest products could be in jeopardy.

Project Objectives:

• Provide remote sensing and GIS products for wildlife conservation and forest management
• Monitor logging progression, deforestation, and forest degradation
• Develop remote sensing tools for forest monitoring

Project Activities:

• Mapping vegetation types using Landsat satellite imagery
• Developing indices of logging intensity using satellite imagery
• Evaluating the impact of selective logging on forest canopy for different forest types using very-high-resolution satellite imagery (i.e. 4-m IKONOS & QuickBird)
• Conducting Leaf Area Index (LAI) study of different forest types and logged vs. unlogged forest

Please see the list of products below for further activities in this region.

Products & Applications

• Assessing the accuracy of vegetation mapping using aerial videography
• Assessing the rates of deforestation in logging towns
• Monitoring the progression of logging through the mapping of logging roads

Below is a collection of maps produced by the INFORMS project for northern Congo and the Sangha Tri-National Park. These products have been used by the WCS to model wildlife habitats and conservation threats, as well as to support forest management activities and land use planning carried out by CIB and WCS. These products have also been used as base maps by various scientists conducting ecological and socioeconomic research projects in the region.

Select a product to view an enlarged version of each browse image. To obtain the full resolution products and their metadata files, please contact .

Landsat satellite image mosaic of the 2000's	Tri-National Park vegetation map
Forest stratification for CIB concessions	Deforestation mapping in logging towns
Progression of logging roads in Northern Congo

 

Future Outlook

In addition to current activities, WHRC scientists will continue to develop remote sensing tools for forest monitoring and forest management. Specifically, in collaboration with CIB, WHRC researchers plan to use very-high-resolution satellite imagery (i.e. 4-m IKONOS & Quickbird) to assess its newly installed reduced impact logging (RIL) operation. Other anticipated activities include (1) integrating commercial forest inventory with remote sensing data and (2) improving forest mapping using a multi-sensor approach.