ANALYSIS OF THE PROCESSES BEHIND WOODLAND TRANSITION IN COMMERCIAL CHARCOAL PRODUCING AREAS: A CASE STUDY OF KINTAMPO NORTH DISTRICT OF GHANA

Abstract

The study examined the processes behind woodlands transition in Dawadawa, a major charcoal producing community in the Kintampo North District (KND) of Ghana. It is argued that commercial charcoal production plays a significant role in woodland degradation because of the manner in which the trees are harvested. Such arguments are informed by simplistic analysis of land cover change because they focused on the change in quantity of the land cover excluding the processes behind the change in quantity in the analysis process. The study has demonstrated that focusing land cover analysis on solely the quantity of change is misleading since a large change in the quantity of a land cover type does not necessarily mean that the process initiating the change is systematic which has always been the assumption in conventional land cover change analysis. Image classification was applied to map land cover types in 2000 and 2007 and post-classification change detection technique was used to detect land cover change between the two timelines. The analysis of the processes of change was based on the changed matrix. The analysis of the processes of land covers change. This revealed that the transitions from riparian to woodland and bareland to shrubland have the largest ratio of 0.3; thus woodland and shrubland gained systematically from riparian and bareland respectively more than any of the other land cover types. Also, the transition of woodland to shrubland is random. The study concluded that the gap in systematic transition between woodland and shrubland is the cause of the worsening degradation of the woodland. It is recommended that woodland management should focus on shrubland to bridge the gap between the woodland and the shrubland in order to sustain the woodlands.