Odzala National Park, Republic of Congo
Located in the heart of the great Congo basin rainforest the Odzala National Park is one of Africa's least known and most extraordinary tropical forest ecosystems. Climatic fluctuations in Central Africa over the past several thousand years have caused a succession of transitions from forest to savanna and back to forest. The resulting patchwork of savannas and forests that we see today in the Odzala National Park explains the exceptional diversity of plants and animals found here. Grimm's duiker, spotted hyenas and lions, typically savanna species, are found shoulder to shoulder with forest elephants, buffalos, bongos, leopards, gorillas and other forest mammal species. This mosaïc of forest and savanna has resulted in a variety of landscapes, and a feeling of space, rarely encountered in forested zones. Another unique feature of the Odzala National Park is the presence of many forest clearings offering marvellous game viewing opportunities. These clearings appear to be created and maintained by the high number of large mammals that are attracted to them by the mineral salts in the soils, and by particular plant species that grow here. Gorilla, bongo and elephant, giant forest hog, bush pig, sitatunga and leopard are all regular visitors to these clearings. The area has been relatively well protected until now by its isolation and a low human population density. Odzala CyberTracker ProjectDuring the first 18 months the CyberTracker pilot project in Odzala collected more than 35 000 observations. Since each observation consists of about 10 fields, this amounts to about 350 000 discrete units of information. While priority is given to
monitoring key species, such as the Lowland Gorilla and
the Forest Elephant, ecogaurdes also collect information
on vegetation types.
A forest elephant in Odzala National Park (Photo © P. Dejace/ECOFAC)Monitoring changes in forest of the tropical belt presents a formidable yet vital challenge for remote sensing. In order to address this issue a joint project between the Joint Research Centre (in Italy) and the European Space Agency was initiated entitled the TREES Project: Tropical Ecosystem Environment observation by Satellite. The TREES project is oriented towards the study of tropical forest dynamics at regional to global scales using remote sensing techniques. One of the problems involves the ground-truthing of satellite images in order to determine the vegetation types. To overcome this problem, geo-referenced CyberTracker data collected at Odzala is sent to the TREES Project in Italy to assist them in their interpretation of satellite images. The pilot project in Odzala will now be expanded by ECOFAC to ten other national parks in central Africa, including the Republic of Congo, Gabon, Guinee Equatoriale, Sao Tomé, RCA, Cameroun and Tchad. |
