ArticleSensors (Basel, Switzerland)2026
Significant Land Cover Transitions and Regional Acceleration at the Continental Scale of Africa over the Last Four Decades.
Article in Sensors (Basel, Switzerland), 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Land cover (LC) change is reshaping terrestrial ecosystems and profoundly impacting sustainable development in Africa, yet the long-term, continental-scale spatiotemporal dynamics of these shifts remain obscured. To address the above issue, this study systematically explores the spatiotemporal dynamics of LC across Africa from 1985 to 2022 by leveraging the fine-resolution remote-sensing-derived GLC_FCS30D LC dataset within a stratified Intensity Analysis framework. To decompose landscape changes into interval, category, and transition levels across five climatic sub-regions of Africa, we systematically evaluate the temporal consistency of land systems. This hierarchical approach disentangles systematic transition pathways from random fluctuations, thereby revealing the distinct regional regimes governing continental transformation of LC. Our results ultimately show a strong LC change acceleration in Africa after 2010, mainly in Southern, Eastern, and Western Africa, which together made up 80 to 90% of the continent's LC dynamics. During the whole study period, shrubland and grassland had the highest gross turnover due to their high bidirectional volatility. Intensity-wise, forest remained inactive even though it was a persistent net loser to crop in East Africa (2010-2020), to shrub in Southern Africa (1990-2022), and to wetland in West Africa during the post-2000 intervals. Wetland had a major change in dynamics from historical growth during 1985-1990 to systematic decline in 2015-2022. Cropland increased by systematically targeting shrubland and grassland, mainly in East Africa. Additionally, the Sahel contributed 40% of continental grassland to bare area transitions, despite some recovery of grassland in the region. These findings show that aggregate net-change metrics obscure the volatility in African LC; therefore, distinct regional regimes such as agricultural expansion and forest degradation necessitate spatially differentiated management strategies.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.