Assessment of bush encroachment and its potential drivers in selected locations of the Limpopo Province, between 2001 and 2018 time periods

Abstract

The only ecosystem that is best suited to accommodate livestock in Africa is the Savanna ecosystem. The livestock can be raised well in the savanna ecosystem due to the availability of enough grass and trees. However, there has been an expansion in indigenous woody plant species cover, density, and biomass in the savanna ecosystem. Therefore, with an increase in woody cover, also known as bush encroachment; which is globally, threatening grazing resource availability in the Savanna. The study aim was to assess bush encroachment and its potential drivers in selected locations of the Limpopo province, between 2001 and 2018 time periods. The objectives of this study are to highlight areas of bush encroachment using existing remote sensing derived tree cover product over a period between 2001 and 2018 in the Limpopo province; and to determine environmental and socio-economic factors that influence bush encroachment in the Limpopo province. The tree cover change dataset was acquired from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), and was used to asses bush encroachment. The logistic regression was used to determine which environmental and socio-economic variables influence bush encroachment. When implementing logistic regression to understand drivers of bush encroachment, three scenarios were decided, i) environmental variables only, ii) socioeconomic variables only and iii) environmental and socio-economic data combined. The results of the study show that there has been an increase of bush encroachment over the past years in the Limpopo province. Environmental variables such as temperature minimum, temperature mean and bulk density were found to significantly influence bush encroachment. Similarly, socio-economic variables such as population density and annual income distributions such as household income with no income; income above poverty line; income below average income; average income; and middle average income were found to be significant. Therefore, the study used the applications of remote sensing to assess bush encroachment in the Limpopo province.