Climatic and demographic determinants of vegetation cover in northern Cameroon

International audienceThe objective of the study was to evaluate spatio-temporal impacts of the seasonal rainfall and the urban population growth on NDVI variations in the North-Cameroon which includes from south to north, Sudanese and Sahelian climates. To this end, 48 points of measured rainfall were interpolated based on the kriging method at a spatial resolution of 8km in accordance with the NOAA-AVHRR NDVI dataset. Relationships between rainfall and NDVI, on the one hand, and urban population growth and NDVI on the other hand, were analyzed considering the 79 Administrative Units (AU) in Cameroon. Seasonal (rainy season) variations of the vegetation cover were studied for the period 1987-2002 using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) product at 8-Km (NOAA-AVHRR) and 1-Km (SPOT-VEGETATION) of spatial resolution. The paper emphasized the importance of the urban signal for the NDVI studies at finer scales specifically in tropical areas