Spatio-temporal dynamic of land use/occupation in the communes of Koumbia and Dedougou (Burkina faso)

The western cotton zone of Burkina Faso has relatively favorable agro-climatic conditions compared to other regions. It is a preferred destination for agricultural migrants, with land saturation as result in some localities. Remote sensing plays an important role in natural resources management, particularly crops land. The objective of this study is to show land use/occupation dynamics in order to propose tracks for their sustainable management. In order to better understand this dynamic, the commune was chosen as the observation scale. Mono-temporal Landsat images covering the communes of Koumbia and Dédougou were used. A total of six scenes from October 1990, 2002 and 2016 were acquired via the United States Geological Survey's (USGS) GLOVIS website. Their processing required several phases : pre-processing, field control, supervised classification with the maximum likelihood algorithm and change detection. ENVI 4.7 was used for images processing and Arc GIS 10.2 for vectorization and mapping. The results show an increase of the surface area of farming areas to the detriment of natural vegetation between 1990 and 2016. At Koumbia, farming area was multiplied by 3.5 and At Dédougou, it increased by 149%, at average annual expansion rates of 4.87 and 3.5% respectively. According to surveys, field expansion as a solution to low land productivity has reached its limits. It is therefore necessary to adopt new sustainable land management techniques. Biochar amendment might contribute to this sustainable land management.