Cartographie des zones humides à DSCHANG (Cameroun)

Utilisation des images satellitales d’accès gratuit

Abstract

Context and background:
Wetlands are widely recognized for the ecological and cultural functions they provide. In southern countries, planning documents poorly integrate the location and preservation of wetlands due to the cost of the works.
Goal and objectives:
A remote sensing mapping model applied on Dschang and reproducible in other municipalities is proposed for Wetlands inventory by using free satellite images, thus reducing costs. It is based on the observation of hydrological, morphological, pedological and land use data.
Methodology and Results:
The wetlands map made it possible to distinguish 387 sites of more than 1 ha, grouped into three classes staggered according to the level of susceptibility. The first level (414 ha) corresponds to the surfaces of open water, marshes and saturated soils. The second level (1220 ha) corresponds to swamps and related areas to an open water surface. The third level (2390 ha) corresponds to potentially wet areas to be confirmed by field visits. The wetlands map was first validated by an overlay with Google Earth images. The second consisted of producing the overall accuracy by collecting 129 ground truth points. The reliability is over 90%. From the observation of pedology, altimetry and slope, hypersensitive areas where human action should be limited to preserve the balance of the environment were summarily located.