Protection reduces loss of natural land-cover at sites of conservation importance across Africa.

ABSTRACT: There is an emerging consensus that protected areas are key in reducing adverse land-cover change, but their efficacy remains difficult to quantify. Many previous assessments of protected area effectiveness have compared changes between sets of protected and unprotected sites that differ systematically in other potentially confounding respects (e.g. altitude, accessibility), have considered only forest loss or changes at single sites, or have analysed changes derived from land-cover data of low spatial resolution. We assessed the effectiveness of protection in reducing land-cover change in Important Bird Areas (IBAs) across Africa using a dedicated visual interpretation of higher resolution satellite imagery. We compared rates of change in natural land-cover over a c. 20-year period from a

SUBMITTER: Beresford AE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3667134 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature