Journal of Basic and Applied Research International

Exploitation of timber and non-timber forest resources have contributed to land use and land cover changes that affected vegetation health in the Bosomtwe district in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. The objective of this paper is to determine the extent of land use and cover changes occurring from 1986 to 2007 and to examine the health of vegetation in the Bosomtwe district. Land use and cover changes were investigated using the maximum likelihood supervised classification method in Hexagon Geospatial’s ERDAS Imagine and ArcGIS software. Vegetation health analysis was done using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). Results of the image classification and NDVI analysis showed considerable expansion of infrastructure, extension of agricultural lands and mining activities that contributed to reduction in forest cover and loss of the woody vegetation. Land Use and Land Cover classes for build up, bare lands and concrete surfaces increased from 1,201.1 in 1986 to 5,663.2 Ha, in 2002. Dense forest increased by 2,926.8 Ha in 2002 with a further increase of 3,633.1Ha in 2007. The study concludes with a recommendation that Agriculture, Forestry and other Land Use (AFOLU) activities in the district have to be controlled in order not to disturb the forest and fresh water ecosystem of Lake Bosomtwe.