Cocoa Map for Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana

Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana are the largest producers of cocoa in the world. In recent decades the cultivation of this crop has led to the loss of vast tracts of forest areas in both countries. Efficient and accurate methods for remotely identifying cocoa plantations are essential to the implementation of sustainable cocoa practices and for the periodic and effective monitoring of forests. In this study, a method for cocoa plantation identification was developed based on a multi-temporal stack of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 images and a multi-feature Random Forest (RF) algorithm. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and second-order texture features were assessed for their importance in an RF classification, and their optimal combination was used as input variables for the RF model to identify cocoa plantations in both countries. The RF model-based cocoa map achieved 82.89% producer's and 62.22% user's accuracy, detecting 3.69 million hectares (Mha) and 2.15 Mha of cocoa plantations for Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, respectively. The results demonstrate that a combination of an RF model and multi-feature classification can distinguish cocoa plantations from other land cover/use, effectively reducing feature dimensions and improving classification efficiency. The results also highlight that cocoa farms largely encroach into protected areas (PAs), as 20% of the detected cocoa plantation area is located in PAs, and almost 70% of the PAs in the study area house cocoa plantations. Further details regarding the sites selection, mapping, and validation procedures are described in the corresponding publication: Abu, IO., Szantoi, Z., Brink, A., Robuchon, M., Thiel, M. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2021.107863, 2021.

Data and Resources

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Cite this as

Abu, Itohan-Osa, Szantoi, Zoltan, Brink, Andreas, Robuchon, M, Thiel, Michael (2020). Dataset: Cocoa Map for Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.917473

DOI retrieved: 2020

Additional Info

Field Value
Imported on November 30, 2024
Last update November 30, 2024
License CC-BY-4.0
Source https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.917473
Author Abu, Itohan-Osa
Given Name Itohan-Osa
Family Name Abu
More Authors
Szantoi, Zoltan
Brink, Andreas
Robuchon, M
Thiel, Michael
Source Creation 2020
Publication Year 2020
Subject Areas
Name: Ecology

Related Identifiers
Title: Detecting cocoa plantations in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana and their implications on protected areas
Identifier: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2021.107863
Type: DOI
Relation: References
Year: 2021
Source: Ecological Indicators
Authors: Abu Itohan-Osa , Szantoi Zoltan , Brink Andreas , Robuchon M , Thiel Michael .