Biodiversity Management Using Remotely Sensed Data and GIS Technologies: The Case of Digya National Park, Ghana Yaw A. Twumasi 1 , Tommy L. Coleman 2 , Andrew Manu 3 1 Center for Hydrology, Soil Climatology, and Remote Sensing. Department of Plant and Soil Science. P.O. Box 1208. Alabama A&M University, Normal, AL 35762 Tel: 256-852-0791, Fax: 256-851-5076. E-mail: yaw .twumasi@email.aamu.edu 2 Center for Hydrology, Soil Climatology, and Remote Sensing. Department of Plant and Soil Science. P.O. Box 1208. Alabama A&M University, Normal, AL 35762 Tel: 256-372-4192, Fax: 256-851-5076. E-mail: tommy .coleman@email.aamu.edu 3 Department of Agronomy, Iowa State University. 1126A Agronomy Hall, Ames, IA 50011 Tel: 515-294-5510, Fax: 515-294-8146. E-mail: akmanu@iastate.edu Abstract - Effective management of biodiversity resources in nature reserves requires accurate and up-to-date information to determine the type of land cover and land use over time. This study employed Landsat TM and ETM+ data to develop a database for Digya National Park in Ghana which will assist in the management and formulation of policies and offer decision-making tasks related to park management. The study revealed that the most significant cause of deforestation in Digya National Park is the expanding Lake Volta, which accounted for two-thirds of all deforestation factors. Other factors included human settlement and the extension of illegal farming activities. The paper concludes by outlining policy recommendations such as the need for the Wildlife Department to coordinate its protection efforts with Departments of the Government of Ghana which have authority over the Volta Dam and also to involve the community in the decision making process both at the local and national level. KEYWORDS: Biodiversity, degradation, land use, remote sensing, GIS 1. INTRODUCTION The loss of biodiversity has attracted the global attention for more than a decade. After the 1972 Stockholm conference on the Human Environment, the international community responded with the appointment of the Brundtland Commission, whose report in 1987 sparked heightened and increasing concerns (Grose, 1993). As human impact on the environment has intensified, more attention was directed at finding ways to preserve the existing biodiversity. One of the major obstacles to biodiversity monitoring in many places of the world is the lack of appropriate information and data. Effective management of biodiversity resources requires accurate and up-to-date information, especially time series data, to guide park managers in making appropriate decision. Much has been written about the need for information in areas needing protection. Along the southern coasts of South Africa there was an urgent need for information about land use and species habitats to prevent erosion of biodiversity (Raal and Burns, 1996). Salem (2003) recently reported that one of the major obstacles to biodiversity monitoring in many places of the world but especially in Egypt is the lack of GIS software capable of representing the distribution of species up to and including 3- D hologram images, so as to make getting a picture of the problem easy and sufficiently rapid for appropriate policy development. In discussing the problem of marine biodiversity resource management, Stanbury and Starr (1999) suggested that the development of an interdisplinary GIS for the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary would be sufficient to deal with the protection problem. Taulman and Smith (2002) showed how to deal with bird habitats across mainland United States. Similar analyses are found in Zhang and Beavis (1999) for the Namoi basin in Australia. Digya National park in Ghana, which is the focus of this study, lacks the necessary information database on land use and land cover. In the absence of such basic information on the current and historical land use and land cover in and around the Digya National Park, it would be difficult to determine future improvement interventions. and also deterioration in the integrity of the park. This suggests the need to provide an up- to-date database about land use and land cover at Digya National Park and its environs. The purpose of this paper is to add to any existing information database on forest resources using remotely sensed data, Geographic Information System (GIS) technology and global positioning systems (GPS) technologies. 2. MATERIAL AND METHODS Study Area The Digya National Park Reserve is situated 300 km inland from Accra, the capital of Ghana in the Brong Ahafo region. It is bounded to the east, north and south by the Volta lake (Figure 1). Its geographical coordinates are 7 degrees 05 minutes north latitude and 0 degrees 45 minutes west longitude. The park occupies an area of 347,830 hectares (WCMC, 1992, 1997; Figure 1). As Ghana’s second largest national park, it was established in 1909 during the colonial period with a relatively small game reserve of about 65,000 ha. After Ghana achieved independence