Anthropogenic pressures and spatio-temporal dynamics of forest ecosystems in the rural and border municipality of Kasenga (DRC)

Migration and the dependence of rural communities on forest resources for subsistence have profoundly altered the composition and spatial structure of the landscapes of the border municipality of Kasenga in the southeast of DR Congo. The spatio-temporal dynamics of anthropogenic effects on forest ecosystems were mapped and quantified in the municipality of Kasenga using Landsat image classification from 1989 to 2022, combined with landscape ecology metrics to analyze spatial patterns. Our results show that the landscape has undergone profound disturbances. The area of large patches of forest that used to dominate the landscape has been reduced by a factor of 4 from 1989 to 2022, thus indicating the anthropogenic impact on the fragmentation of forest ecosystems. If in 33 years (from 1989 to 2022) forest has lost more than a third of their coverage through the dissection, fragmentation and attrition of patches, agriculture, grassland and wetland, and built-up and bare land have recorded a progressive dynamic resulting from the creation and aggregation of patches. These anthropogenic transformations, coupled with a lack of land management planning, will compromise the future of forest ecosystems since the level of landscape disturbance has quintupled from 1.1 to 5.5 in 33 years. There is then an urgent need to develop an integrated and participatory land management strategy to preserve forest resources and guarantee their resilience.