MAPPING AND TREE SPECIES DIVERSITY OF THE FOREST SAVANNA MOSAIC IN ASHANTI REGION, GHANA

Abstract

The objectives of the study are; (1) to stratify the existing degraded forest into defined land cover types using satellite imagery; (2) to assess the level of canopy cover and (3) ecological stratification of forest and savanna according to vegetation cover based on a terrestrially assessed parameter canopy cover was conducted as a supervised classification of satellite images. Two vegetation strata were identified and classified as forest and savanna. The forest vegetation featured an open canopy structure with an estimated average canopy cover of 21.6 ± 3.2%. The canopy cover ranges from a minimum of 10% to a maximum of 51.8%. A tree species assessment recorded a total of 65 tree species belonging to 49 genera and 23 families. A comparison of the tree composition of the forest and savanna vegetation strata revealed no significant differences. A literature review of the inventoried tree species revealed that, the majority of tree species are characteristic forest species (47.7%), while typical savanna woodland species and species found in both vegetation types recording 36.9 and 15.4% respectively.