Mapping and monitoring urban growth on wetlands in humid tropical context using earth observation technology: Case study of Mangrove zones around Douala in Cameroon

Douala, the economic capital of Cameroon, is the hub of the Country in terms of Commercial, industrial, transport, fishing, agricultural, craft activities and the tourism industry. As typical of most tropical metropolis, Douala with 1.5 million inhabitants has a rapid annual population growth rate of more than 5 per cent. The spatial expansion of Douala has been greatly deterred and handicapped by its peninsular environment made up principally of a plane topography that is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, River Wouri and a Mangrove ecosystem. This Mangrove occupies a surface area of 2700 Km² along the Fringes of Littoral Cameroon, and typical of brackish humid environments. The main objective of this work was to show how the advance radar processing technique can enable important information to be extracted to characterize mangroves found in the west and south of Douala. This all-weather capability of radar waves is one of the main advantages of imaging radars compared to optical sensors. The Interferometric Land-Use (ILU) technique is useful for quickly assessing of the suitability of an interferometric pair for discrimination between different land use types around the Douala city.