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Fifty years of deforestation and forest fragmentation in Madagascar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2008

GRADY J. HARPER ,
MARC K. STEININGER ,
COMPTON J. TUCKER ,
DANIEL JUHN  and
FRANK HAWKINS
GRADY J. HARPER*
Affiliation:
Conservation International, 2011 Crystal Drive suite 500, Arlington VA 22202, USA
MARC K. STEININGER
Affiliation:
Conservation International, 2011 Crystal Drive suite 500, Arlington VA 22202, USA
COMPTON J. TUCKER
Affiliation:
Code 923NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, USA
DANIEL JUHN
Affiliation:
Conservation International, 2011 Crystal Drive suite 500, Arlington VA 22202, USA
FRANK HAWKINS
Affiliation:
Conservation International, 2011 Crystal Drive suite 500, Arlington VA 22202, USA Conservation International, BP 5178, Antananarivo 101, Madagascar
*
*Correspondence: Grady Harper Tel: +1 703 341 2761 Fax: +1 703 979 2514 e-mail: gharper@conservation.org
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Summary

Tropical deforestation is a key contributor to species extinction and climate change, yet the extent of tropical forests and their rate of destruction and degradation through fragmentation remain poorly known. Madagascar's forests are among the most biologically rich and unique in the world but, in spite of longstanding concern about their destruction, past estimates of forest cover and deforestation have varied widely. Analysis of aerial photographs (c. 1953) and Landsat images (c. 1973, c. 1990 and c. 2000) indicates that forest cover decreased by almost 40% from the 1950s to c. 2000, with a reduction in ‘core forest’ > 1 km from a non-forest edge of almost 80%. This forest destruction and degradation threaten thousands of species with extinction. Country-wide coverage of high-resolution validated forest cover and deforestation data enables the precise monitoring of trends in habitat extent and fragmentation critical for assessment of species' conservation status.

Keywords

deforestationforestfragmentationMadagascarremote sensing
Type
Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , December 2007 , pp. 325 - 333
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2007

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