Protecting the patches from the footprints: examining the land use factors associated with forest patches in Atewa range forest reserve.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Land use practices are noted to contribute to changes in forest landscape composition. However, whereas studies have reported the intermix of land uses and forest patches and measured the direct impacts of land uses on forest patches, little is known regarding the spatially-explicit association between the most recent forest patches and land use footprints in protected areas. In this study, we use methods from GIS, remote sensing, and statistics to model the spatial relationship between footprints of land uses and patches of forest cover by drawing on geospatial data from the Atewa range forest reserve (ARFR). RESULTS: The study finds that forest patches that are within 1 km from agricultural land use footprints (AOR = 86.625, C.I. 18.057-415.563, P = 0.000), logging sites (AOR = 55.909, C.I. 12.032-259.804, P = 0.000), mine sites (53.571, C.I. 11.287-254.255, P = 0.000), access roads (AOR = 24.169, C.I. 5.544-105.357, P = 0.000), and human settlement footprints (AOR = 7.172, C.I. 1.969-26.128, P = 0.003) are significantly more likely to be less than the mean patch area (375,431.87 m2 = 37.54 ha) of forest cover. A ROC statistic of 0.995 achieved in this study suggests a high predictive power of the proposed model. CONCLUSION: The study findings suggest that to ensure sustainable land uses and ecological integrity, there is a need for land use policies and land management strategies that ensure responsible livelihood activities as well as further restrictions on logging and mining in the globally significant biodiversity area.