Liberia's coastal erosion vulnerability and LULC change analysis: Post-civil war and Ebola epidemic

Abstract

In most developing countries, data for coastal change and vulnerability assessment is hard to come by due, e.g., to data inaccessibility or incomplete dataset. In some countries, e.g., Liberia, a country that was ravaged by civil war and Ebola epidemic, such extraneous factors prevent direct observations, i.e., “boots on the ground”. This study examines temporal changes in land use/land cover (LULC), coastline changes, and coastal vulnerability to erosion and their effects on Liberia over a period of 29 years (1986–2015). The results from the post-classification change detection analysis using Landsat data (validated by moderate resolution Sentinel-2 product) show that bare land and sediment classes decreased over the entire study period by 5.07% and 0.06%, respectively. Water, vegetation, and residential classes are found to have increased during the 29 years of evaluation by 0.41%, 3.29% and 1.43%, respectively. Vegetation cover during the post-civil war era (2002–2015), however, reduced by about 0.31%. Furthermore, the results for the coastal analysis indicate more erosion during the period 1998–2002, i.e., the post-civil war period. The results also show an increase in residential areas possibly due to population growth, especially in the most populated areas such as Monrovia, the capital city.