There is much concern and debate about the continuing deforestation in the tropics. Rainforests are not only sheltering a vast biodiversity, but they play a significant role in sequestration and storage of carbon. Therefore, science has and is contributing to the monitoring of forest loss and states by making in particular use of satellite imagery timeseries.
Within the BIOTA East Africa project three truly comparable timeseries have been derived for the Kakamgea-Nandi forests area in western Kenya and Mabira and Budongo Forest areas in Uganda. Here besides Landsat data also historical aerial photography and old topographic maps were used to distinguish between various forest formations and to cover via 12/13 time steps a time span of almost 100 years. The additional use of archive material (old maps, oral histories of early travellers), forestry records, thematic maps, interviews with the oldest people living in the areas, place names, and pollen analysis of soil cores allowed for an even more detailed and time-wise extended view revealing also the causes of forest change. The analysis of the manifold data in a geographic information system (GIS) thus has contributed to detailed information on the forests’ states and disturbance levels today which are needed for a sustainable forest management.
From the research it can be concluded that generalisations on forest change for the forest remnants in Eastern Africa would not reflect reality. It seems that every forest has its own unique forest use history.