## 2 Study Area  
The dataset contains satellite images obtained for the region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with the three target areas located in the middle region of the Congo River Basin, according to the regional division [83]. The surroundings of the towns Bumba, Basoko and Kisangani are located on the Congo River, which serves as the main transportation artery in the region (Figure 1).  
Kisangani is the capital of the Tshopo province, situated at the confluence of the rivers Congo, Lualaba, Tshopo, and Lindi. It is strategically located at the crossroads between the eastern and western parts of Congo. Basoko town is situated in the confluence of the Aruwimi tributary into the Congo River. Bumba is a small town and a river port in the Mongala Province, which is in the northern part of the DRC. As a part of the Congo River Basin, these cities have a tropical monsoon climate with a dry winter period and humid summer-autumn seasons with heavy precipitation and periodically flooded areas [84]. Such a climate setting, characterised by rainfalls interspersed with a dry season climate, in the Congo Basin creates favourable conditions for the distribution of the world's largest tropical humid forests [85].  
The importance of the study area is explained by the crucial environmental role of the Congo River Basin. It contains over half of the African tropical moist forests, with Salonga National Park being the largest rain forest park in the world [86], and it largely contributes to the Earth's atmosphere's circulation on the planetary scale. Furthermore, the tropical rainforests of Congo are a key factor in producing oxygen and regulating global temperature through the absorption of solar radiation by forest massifts. Moreover, forest resources offer critical and principal support to the welfare of rural livelihoods and the socioeconomic wellbeing of the local population [87], which includes forest-related practices such as forest clearing. As a result, land use and shifting agriculture have become the major causes of the hydrological flow regime, environmental changes from the regional to global scale [88], as well as deforestation, along with the increased population density and associated urban growth [89].  
At the same time, primary forests are essential ecosystems that play a key role in mitigating climate change, which raises the need to take action by mitigating the effects from deforestation and resilient development in forest degradation [90,91]. Efforts to conserve natural resources in Congo tropical rainforests recently launched global initiatives, such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) [92,93] and the Global Rain Forest Mapping (GRFM) project [94]. On a regional and local level, practicing agroforests serve as ecosystem services responding to the climate change mitigation strategy [95]. Nevertheless, the Congo River Basin remains the least studied region in Africa and in the global tropics [96]. The approach we present here contributes to the development of methods for the environmental analysis of the selected regions of the Congo River Basin using remote sensing data and R programming.