Using real-time forest loss alerts and global deforestation maps to assess the effectiveness of Africa's tropical protected areas
Tropical rainforests harbor a significant portion of the world's remaining biodiversity. Having undergone rapid changes in forest cover over the last two decades, a large amount of irreplaceable biodiversity has been lost. The establishment of protected areas has been a key strategy to hinder the loss of tropical forests and biodiversity. However, the effectiveness of designating protected areas has been called into question, particularly in regions such as tropical Africa where widespread conditions of poverty, rapid population growth and political instability are evident. Quantitative measurements of park effectiveness for forest conservation are urgently needed, however accurate inferences concerning park effectiveness across broad regions is difficult. Whilst remote sensing techniques have been proposed as a practical solution, the intensity of data processing has made it untenable until recently. Here, I use remote-sensing methods to analyze high-resolution satellite imagery of tropical forest loss (as a proxy for tropical deforestation) within and outside 224 parks across 23 countries in Africa. I compare the extent of tropical forest loss inside parks to outside of them to show that the majority of African parks in the Subtropical and Tropical Moist Broadleaf forest biome are effective in curbing forest loss within park boundaries. However, certain parks were more effective in forest conservation than others. Whilst smaller parks were less effective at preventing forest loss inside park boundaries than larger parks, older parks were less effective than younger parks. Furthermore, parks of varying IUCN management categories exhibited negligible differences in forest loss between one another. Lastly, significant geographical variations in park effectiveness existed: West African parks exhibited the most forest loss within park boundaries and Central African parks exhibited the least. My results demonstrate the complexity of factors which influence a park's ability to curb forest loss within its boundaries. Furthermore, this study is the first bioregional-wide assessment of park effectiveness using remote sensing. These results supplement scarce literature on tropical deforestation in Africa and demonstrate the potential of using remote satellite imagery for measuring the relative impact of park establishment on forest conservation in this region.
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Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology