Modelling the deforestation-population relationships prevailing in the Yankari game reserve, Nigeria
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Date
2018
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Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
Abstract
For decades, deforestation continues to become a subject of discussion owing to its multidimensional environmental effects such as dwindling timber resources, peculiarities in climate change, increase in human population, frequency and magnitude of natural disasters that have affected the forest dependent dwellers. At the macro scale globally, population increase has been claimed an underlying cause of deforestation. However, evidence to prove population growth as an underlying cause of deforestation phenomenon at the local level (micro scale) is inadequate. As deforestation dimensions differ spatially and temporally, there is a need to determine the relationship between deforestation and the population at local levels and context. This research attempts to investigate the relationship between deforestation and the population occurring in the protected forest reserve of Yankari in Bauchi state, Nigeria. The objectives of this study are to study deforestation in Yankari Game Reserve and to model and analyse the prevailing deforestation-population relationships. Supervised technique of remote sensing was used to detect changes in forest cover for 21 years i.e. between 1990 and 2011. One hundred and fifty structured questionnaires were distributed to dwellers within the vicinity of Yankari Game Reserve. When the population density, population growth, income of the population, and their level of education were considered, it was found that there is a high correlation between deforestation, population growth and educational level. This direct relationship indicates the increase in population leads to the increase in deforestation. The population growth rose by 15% from 1990-2001 and decreased to 12.34% from 2001-2011 with a correspondence deforestation rate of 1.5% and 1.6% respectively. This study concludes that the relationships between deforestation and population in the protected forest, depends on the local tradition, culture, religion and the environment. Therefore, this research posits that deforestation at the local level is very much influenced by the four population parameters of Yankari Game Reserve which include the population growth, population density, population income and educational level. The study recommends that Geographic Information System (GIS) database should be established at the local level to store spatial data for the distribution of forests and deforested areas.
Description
Thesis (Ph.D (Geoinformatic))
Keywords
Deforestation -- Nigeria