Ecological and Structural Analyses of Trees in an Evergreen Lowland Congo Basin Forest

Floristic inventory and diversity assessments are necessary to understand the present diversity status and conservation of forest biodiversity. Studying the variation height-diameter woody provides insight into the general characteristics of the trees diversity pattern. This study mainly focuses on aimed to assess the effectiveness of trees diversity and structure in two study sites. The study was conducted at Ipendja evergreen lowland moist forest in northern Republic of Congo. The sampling design was systematic consisted of parallel transect 1 or 2 km part, and divided into consecutive rectangular plots, each 5000m2 (25 x 200 m, i.e. 0.5 ha). Within eight plots censuses, all trees with a DBH 10 cm were identified and measured. A total of 1340 trees has been recorded belonged 145 species and 36 families (n = 607 and n = 733, respectively in Mokelimwaekili and Sombo sites). The results show that the leading botanical families were Sapotaceae follows by Euphorbiaceae, Meliaceae, Caesalpiniaceae, Sterculiaceae, Annonaceae and Rubiaceae. The most representative species were C. mildbraedii, S. kamerunensis and P. oliveri, i.e. 62.06%, 30.34% and 28.27% respectively, suggested that they were the leading dominant species of this forest ecosystem. Shannon index were 4.29 bits for Mokelimwaekili and 4.22 bits for Sombo. While Pielou’s evenness index was between 0.88 and 0.90, respectively for the Mokelimwaekili and Sombo sites. The similarity coefficient for Jaccard was 62% and 58% for Sorensen. There are highlight variations in tree diversity indices across sites and plots in Ipendja forest.

Mapping Congo Basin forest types from 300 m and 1km multi-sensor time series for carbon stocks and forest areas estimation

This study aimed to contribute to the understanding of the Congo Basin forests by delivering a detailed forest types map with an improved spatial discrimination and coherence for the whole Congo Basin region. A total of 20 land cover classes were described with the standardized Land Cover Classification System (LCCS) developed by the FAO. Based on a semi-automatic processing chain, the forest types map was produced by combining 19 months of observations from the ENVISAT MERIS full resolution products (300 m) and 8 yr of daily SPOT VEGETATION (VGT) reflectances (1 km). Four zones (north, south and two central) were delineated and processed separately according to their seasonal and cloud cover specificities. The discrimination between different vegetation types (e.g. forest and savannas) was significantly improved thanks to the MERIS sharp spatial resolution. This work achieved a better discrimination in cloudy areas by taking advantage of the temporal consistency of the SPOT VGT observations. This resulted in a precise delineation of the spatial extent of the rural complex in the countries situated along the Atlantic coast. Based on this new map, more accurate estimates of the surface areas of forest types were produced for each country of the Congo Basin. The impact of two forest definitions was then assessed in the framework of the reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) initiative and carbon stocks were evaluated. Furthermore, the phenology of the different vegetation types was illustrated systematically with EVI temporal profiles. This Congo Basin forest types map reached a satisfactory overall accuracy of 71.5% and even 78.9% when the two savanna classes are aggregated.

Dynamiques sociales et stratégies féminines dans la Forêt modèle de campo-ma’an, cameroun

Located in the southwestern corner of Cameroon, Campo-Ma’an Model Forest is part of the vast Congo Basin forest. Previously, a variety of interventions in the area have had different effects, some of them negative, on the lives of the local residents including women who are the main providers of household income in rural areas. With the inauguration of the Campo-Ma’an Model Forest in 2005—a platform based on a voluntary partnership of all public, private and community actors—was established. This led to collaboration capable of addressing sustainable development and conservation issues within this region. The goal of this paper is to show that, in this ever-changing context, the Model Forest concept is bringing about changes in the vision, structuring and strategies of the different social groups, particularly amongst women.