期刊名称：American Journal of Geographic Information System
印刷版ISSN：2163-1131
电子版ISSN：2163-114X
出版年度：2019
卷号：8
期号：1
页码：11-25
DOI：10.5923/j.ajgis.20190801.02
语种：English
出版社：Scientific & Academic Publishing Co.
摘要：Deforestation has become one of major problems in tropical forest regions. Understanding causes of the forest cover loss is an important step to reduce deforestation. This study analyses the relationship between the Forest cover loss and its explaining key factors in North Kivu province, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Geospatial methods were used in this study to estimate the loss of the forest cover change in North Kivu using Landsat 7 ETM+ and Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS images for the period from 2001 to 2015. The regression analysis was performed using the Ordinary Least Square Regression (OLS) to analyze the spatial stationary factors of deforestation and the Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) in ArcGIS 10.3 software for the non-stationary factors. The findings reveal an annual rate of deforestation of 1.7% meaning that an average of 70,000 ha of forest area is lost each year. The GWR model was found as the best predictor that explains the Forest cover loss at 93% with the Agriculture Expansion (AE), Slope (SL), Distance from road (DR) and Population Density (PD) as key factors to explain the Forest cover loss. Measures of reducing deforestation in Nord-Kivu should be based on these four key factors for more effectiveness.
关键词：Modelling; Forest Cover loss; Geographic Information System (GIS); Remote Sensing; Deforestation; North-Kivu
