Evaluation of measures for land conservation and sustainable land use in developing countries with remote sensing

Before the background of limited resources, growing population and changing climate a sustainable land use planning and other measures for land conservation (e.g. erosion control) are of great importance for ensuring food security in developing countries. In this context numerous projects are led thru by development agencies in collaboration with governmental departments or NGOs. The implementation of measures is very time and cost intensive. Therefore the question arises how to evaluate the success of the measures.
In comparison to classical field campaigns remote sensing offers some advantages: bigger areas can be observed at the same time, the images are objective so that the results can be double checked by third parties. As well the use of remote sensing images for evaluation can be cheaper as intensive field work by high paid experts.
But there are as well some short drawbacks using remote sensing for the evaluation: poor availability of remote sensing images, atmospheric influence, misinterpretation of the success due to inner-annual vegetation dynamics, insufficient spatial resolution, and others.
In the presentation the possibilities and limitations of evaluation of measures for land conservation with remote sensing will be discussed at examples in West-Africa where common projects with the GTZ and other development agencies had been led thru.
The discussed projects cover a wide range of different topics and spatial scales from anti-erosion measures and vegetable gardening in a very local scale up to agreements for fire management and forest protection on a regional scale. Beneath the description of the used remote sensing images, the used methods with their pros and cons, the aspect of precision and cost will be highlighted. As well new techniques for gathering of remote sensing images in a very high resolution will be presented.