Evaluation of Climate Variability and Land Use Change on Vegetation Dynamics in Fina Reserve, Mali

Abstract

The sustainable management of biodiversity and productivity in forested lands requires an understanding of main interactions between socioeconomic, biophysical factors and their response to environmental change. Fina reserve is located between 13°101 - 401 North latitude and 9°301 - 501West longitude. The study evaluated the effect of climate variability and land use change on the vegetation dynamic in Fina reserve, Mali from 1983 to 2013 using times series analysis, lag-correlation, application of remote sensing (intensity change), farmers’ perception and adaptation measures as well as Geographic Information System (GIS). The result confirms a positive correlation between inter-annual rainfall variability and vegetation since the deficit phase of rainfall correspond to the vegetation deficit phase. Similarly, there is a positive correlation between inter-annual rainfall and Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) of 66% significance at 1% level. NDVI values changed in relation to different amount of rainfall and maximally respond to variation of rainfall with a lag-correlation at about two biweekly with a coefficient of 91%. The temperature is positively correlated with NDVI at the onset and cessation of the season, but negatively correlated during dry and rainy season. Also, the result of land use change detection shows that from 1985 to 2013 there was an increase of agriculture land and decrease in savannah wood land. By implication, the main factors for these changes were natural factors such as deficiency of rainfall and climatic variation since the change in the first interval (1985to1999 was 78.49%) higher than the second interval (1999 to 2013) which was 67.51% even though human population is on increase in second period. Furthermore, the result of transition to forest shows that, savannah woodland and steppe in both time intervals are consistently targeting the forest while bare land and Savannah woodland are consistently targeting agriculture land. The farmers in Fina reserve are aware of the effect of climate change through increase variability of rainfall, higher temperature, shorter length of rainy season, late onset and earlier cessation and increase flooding. Generally, land use and land cover dynamics have local and regional scale effects because its impacts do not have limited boarders and rainfall is the major driver of vegetation dynamics in Fina reserve. Therefore, it becomes necessary to local land use planning and design with protection practices for improved sustainability of the Fina reserve.