Vulnérabilité des terres des écosystèmes du domaine soudanien au Bénin de 1995 à 2015

Northern Benin has 92.5% of the country's entire forest cover, mainly made up of wildlife and forest reserves for biodiversity conservation. Although most of these protected forests have management plans and surveillance systems in place that should limit environmental damage, the forest cover is shrinking rapidly due to human pressures. This study aimed to analyse the vulnerability of forest stands in protected and unprotected zones in three municipalities in northern Benin: Materi, Toucountouna and Segbana. SPOT images from 1995, 2005 and 2015 were interpreted visually with Quantum GIS software to highlight changes and assess the vulnerability of the forest stands. The results show that natural forest stands are losing ground to human land uses. The area of fields and fallow lands increased almost five-fold from 2005 to 2015. During the same period, land degradation was greater in the protected zones than in the non-protected zones. Conversely, deforestation mainly affected the non-protected zones. Natural tree stands were vulnerable to losing surface area to fields, fallow land and homes. The rates of vulnerability of the different stands varied with the period considered and according to the level of protection. These situations are a threat to biodiversity and demand the introduction of a land use planning policy for areas around the protected zones, in order to safeguard their functions and reduce the effects of deforestation and land degradation on the forest reserves.