An appraisal of landuse and landcover mapping in Nigeria

Abstract

Land use and landcover change have emerged as a global phenomenon and perhaps the most significant regional anthropogenic disturbance to the environ-ment, especially in the 20th century. Rapid urbanization/industrialization and large scale agriculture and major changes in human activities have been identified as the major causes of the dramatic changes in land cover and land use patterns globally. Dramatic land cover and land use changes that would have once required centuries now take place within a few decades. Africa is said to have the fastest rate of deforestation in the world as a result of over-dependence on primary resources with direct effect on the bio-diversity. All these call for an urgent need for proper geo-management of land; that is concomitant upon the availability of a detailed, accurate and up-to-date data. Although, there has been a world wide increase in awareness and studies on land use and land cover change analysis in the last four to five decades, there is still an extremely low level of research attention on land use and land cover change studies in Nigeria. Also, some of the few prominent land use and land cover analysis and change detection attempts in the country relied heavily on manual analysis procedure as against the modern recognized digital image interpretation and analysis procedure. It is against this background that this paper attempts the appraisal of some landuse/landcover mapping studies in Nigeria, with a view to ascertaining their usefulness and, more importantly, to suggest the usefulness and application of some of the ‘modern’ methods to relevant studies in Nigeria. Key words: Landcover, landuse, remote sensing, biodiversity, environment.