Tropicultura (Jan 2018)
Dynamiques des paysages régionaux en zone cotonnière du Mali
Abstract
Regional Landscapes Dynamics in The Cotton Zone of Mali. In recent decades, human activities, particularly agriculture, have led to the gradual transformation of a very large part of the earth's surface. In the Mali cotton zone, this human pressure is relatively high due to an increase in cotton and livestock over the past three decades. In addition to the digital processing of satellite images, the methodology was based on calculations of landscape metrics using the Fragstats software for the quantification of the structure at the scale of the task, and this within the same category of tasks and at the global scale of the landscape. At the level of occupancy classes, heterogeneity is observed mainly related to the increase of the proportion of landscape occupied by the agricultural zone which passed in 30 years from 21.92% to 36.57% to the detriment of the wooded savannah which lost 21.57% of its surface. In terms of landscape dynamics, the introduction of cotton cultivation in this area in the 1990s contributed significantly to an increase of more than 260 km² in the cultivated area.
