Agricultural expansion and mining drive forest loss in Ghana despite declining deforestation rates: Evidence from a national-scale assessment

Abstract

Reliable estimates of deforestation are essential for understanding the dynamics of forest change in order to guide conservation and land management policies. However, considerable variation exists among published estimates of forest loss in Ghana, creating uncertainty regarding the magnitude and drivers of deforestation. Furthermore, deforestation rates have largely been estimated for individual forest reserves or selected landscapes rather than for the entire country. To address this gap, the present study provided a nationally explicit assessment of deforestation rates and forest conversion pathways across Ghana between 2015 and 2025 using multi-temporal Sentinel-2 imagery and post-classification change detection techniques. Land use land cover maps were generated for 2015, 2020, and 2025 and used to quantify land cover transitions, estimate deforestation rates, and identify the dominant pathways through which forests were converted to other land uses. Our findings showed that the landscape was largely characterised by stable non-forest (73.82%) and stable forest (22.36%) cover over the study period. Nevertheless, Ghana lost approximately 279,227 ha of forest between 2015 and 2025, corresponding to a cumulative deforestation rate of 4.95% and an average annual deforestation rate of 0.40% yr - 1. Forest loss increased from 130,878 ha during 2015-2020 to 149,984 ha during 2020-2025, indicating an acceleration in deforestation. Spatial analyses showed that stable forests were concentrated mainly within the southwestern high forest zone, whereas forest degradation was more widespread across the transition and savanna landscapes. Examination of forest conversion pathways revealed that agricultural expansion and mining were the predominant drivers of deforestation, accounting for 80.4% and 11% of total forest loss, respectively. Over the decade, mined area exhibited the greatest proportional increase (533.9%). The findings indicated that agricultural expansion remains the principal cause of forest loss in Ghana, although the rapid growth of mining activities constitutes an emerging threat to the country's forest ecosystems. Continued forest loss is likely to undermine carbon sequestration capacity and compromise the contribution of Ghana's forests to climate-change mitigation. By providing updated and spatially explicit estimates of forest change, this study fills a critical knowledge gap in national-scale deforestation assessment in Ghana. It also provides information relevant to national forest monitoring, land-use planning, and the development of strategies aimed at reducing deforestation and promoting sustainable landscape management.