Impacts of Displaced People on Vegetation Cover in Kass Locality, South Darfur, Sudan

Abstract

This study focused on the detection and assessment of the impact of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) on vegetation cover in Kass locality- West Sudan. The study used three-cloud free images of different sensors (TM 1992, ETM+ 2002 and OLI 2017). The imageries were Geo-referenced and radiometrically corrected by using ERDAS Imagine software. Then, subsets of the study area were taken, about 874 Km². The study applied vegetation index (Soil Adjusted and Atmospheric Resistant Vegetation Index (SARVI) and hyper classification analysis. The results revealed that both vegetation cover (VC) and human activities of the study area witnessed remarkable changes during the study period, (1992-2002-2017). There were tremendous changes in the economic activities of the IDPs in the study area, where the majority of the IDPs lost their sources of income generation, which were mainly farming and private business. The trading on the forest products (fuel wood, charcoal and building materials) has become the source of income for a considerable proportion of the IDPs and that reflected in alarming vegetation degradation trend. The conclusions were, natural and reserved forests represented the main source of energy and building materials for the IDPs. It is possible to mobilize and sensitize IDPs to participate in a forestation programs that lead to rehabilitation of deteriorated habitat. The main recommendation of this study is to provide alternative energy source and encouraging IDPs through changing their attitudes to conserve the vegetation cover and rehabilitation of deteriorated environment