remote sensing Article Monitoring Agricultural Expansion in Burkina Faso over 14 Years with 30 m Resolution Time Series: The Role of Population Growth and Implications for the Environment Kim Knauer 1,2,*, Ursula Gessner 1, Rasmus Fensholt 3, Gerald Forkuor 4 and Claudia Kuenzer 1 1 German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD), German Aerospace Center (DLR), 82234 Wessling, Germany;
[email protected] (U.G.);
[email protected] (C.K.) 2 Department of Remote Sensing, University of Wuerzburg, 97074 Wuerzburg, Germany 3 Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, 1350 Copenhagen, Denmark;
[email protected] 4 West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL), P.O. Box 9507, Ouagadougou 06, Burkina Faso;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected] Academic Editors: Clement Atzberger and Prasad S. Thenkabail Received: 21 December 2016; Accepted: 27 January 2017; Published: 5 February 2017 Abstract: Burkina Faso ranges amongst the fastest growing countries in the world with an annual population growth rate of more than three percent. This trend has consequences for food security since agricultural productivity is still on a comparatively low level in Burkina Faso. In order to compensate for the low productivity, the agricultural areas are expanding quickly. The mapping and monitoring of this expansion is difficult, even on the basis of remote sensing imagery, since the extensive farming practices and frequent cloud coverage in the area make the delineation of cultivated land from other land cover and land use types a challenging task. However, as the rapidly increasing population could have considerable effects on the natural resources and on the regional development of the country, methods for improved mapping of LULCC (land use and land cover change) are needed.