Monitoring landcover changes of the Niger inland delta (Mali) by means of Envisat-MERIS data, http://envisat.esa.int/workshops/ meris03/participants/112/paper_meris-workshop_ 2003_finalversion.pdf

The Inland Delta of the river Niger is one of the most fragile ecosystems in the Sahelian zone of Africa. The extent of annual flooding of the vast plains during the months of September to December depends on water levels of the main rivers Niger and Bani. The interaction among pre-flood, flood and post-flood conditions strongly affect land use patterns in and around the delta. Human impact is mainly driven by irrigated rice cropping, rainfed agriculture, grazing and browsing of herds and flocks as well as by fuelwood consumption. Assessing and mapping dynamics of land use are made possible by the systematic application of remote sensing and image analysis. Operational missions of earth observation contribute to the establishment of multi-seasonal and multi-annual monitoring schemes. Under ESA-Announcements of Opportunity (AOs) two projects have been set up to evaluate the reliability of ERS-SAR, ENVISAT-ASAR and ENVISAT-MERIS data for supporting research on the dynamics of land use change in the delta. Actually the project under the ESA ENVISAT AO, which aims to apply high spectral resolution imaging spectrometry for monitoring spatio-temporal patterns of land use and land cover change in Sub Saharan wetlands with special regard to the Inland Deltas of the Niger (Mali) and the Okavango (Botswana) Rivers, has been started. First steps of investigations focus on data selection and visualization as well as on visual and digital classification of multi-seasonal MERIS Level 1B imagery of the Niger Inland Delta. This paper presents first results and is aimed to discuss next steps in using MERIS Level 1B full resolution data for landcover monitoring