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Abstract
We developed a land cover and land use mapping framework specifically designed for agricultural systems of the Sudan-Sahel region. The mapping approach extracts information from inter- and intra-annual vegetation dynamics from dense stacks of Landsat 8 images. We applied this framework to create a 30 m spatial resolution land use map with a focus on agricultural landscapes of northern Nigeria for 2015. This map provides up-to-date information with a higher level of spatial and thematic detail resulting in a more precise characterization of agriculture in the region. The map reveals that agriculture is the main land use in the region. Arable land represents on average 52.5% of the area, higher than the reported national average for Nigeria (38.4%). Irrigated agriculture covers nearly 2.2% of the total area, reaching nearly 20% of the cultivated land when traditional floodplain agriculture systems are included, above the reported national average (0.63%). There is significant variability in land use within the region. Cultivated land in the northern section can reach values higher than 75%, most land suitable for agriculture is already under cultivation and there is limited land for future agricultural expansion. Marginal lands, not suitable for permanent agriculture, can reach 30% of the land at lower altitudes in the northeast and northwest. In contrast, the southern section presents lower land use intensity that results in a complex landscape that intertwines areas farms and larger patches of natural vegetation. This map improves the spatial detail of existing sources of LCLU information for the region and provides updated information of the current status of its agricultural landscapes. This study demonstrates the feasibility of multi temporal medium resolution remote sensing data to provide detailed and up-to-date information about agricultural systems in arid and sub arid landscapes of the Sahel region.
Highlights
In the last 30 years, the importance of earth observation remote sensing for monitoring land use and agricultural development over large areas has steadily grown
Beginning with [8], there have been a number of initiatives have studied land cover and land use trends in the region using Earth observation data [9,10,11,12,13,14]
The relatively limited weight at global scale of its agricultural production and the technical challenges posed by its dynamic agricultural systems dominated by small-scale agriculture have slowed down the adoption of remote sensing monitoring systems and limited the amount and quality of available land use information
Summary
In the last 30 years, the importance of earth observation remote sensing for monitoring land use and agricultural development over large areas has steadily grown. Remote sensing-based cropland monitoring is rapidly becoming operational [1,2,3,4], and a number of agricultural monitoring systems already forecasts yields and production for the main global regions [5,6,7]. These advances have been geographically uneven and, while there has been remarkable progress in some regions, others have received considerably less attention. The relatively limited weight at global scale of its agricultural production and the technical challenges posed by its dynamic agricultural systems dominated by small-scale agriculture have slowed down the adoption of remote sensing monitoring systems and limited the amount and quality of available land use information
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