- Monitoring disturbance patches and post-disturbance succession of natural vegetation in southern Africa

Context and objectives

This project aims at the identification of disturbance patches and post-disturbance evolutions of natural vegetation in the national parks of northern Botswana, using VEGETATION data. There are essentially two phenomena being studied: fire scars in the Chobe National Parks and flooding (or the absence of it) in the Okavango delta. The ephemeral and partly unpredictable character of these phenomena makes their localisation and evaluation often difficult in using high resolution satellite images. Ther should be a substantial gain in basic data if the exact temporal succession and the gross spatial patterns of disturbances could be detected using VEGETATION imagery.

The long term objective is to contribute to the monitoring of ecological changes. The short term objective is to compare different detection techniques such as standard classification, end member analysis and multitemporal analysis.