Abstract

Mapping and quantifying the status of Land use/Land cover (LULC) changes and drivers of change are important for identifying vulnerable areas for change and designing sustainable ecosystem services. This study analyzed the status of LULC changes and key drivers of change for the last 30 years through a combination of remote sensing and GIS with the surveying of the local community understanding of LULC patterns and drivers in the Gubalafto district, Northeastern Ethiopia. Five major LULC types (cultivated and settlement, forest cover, grazing land, bush land and bare land) from Landsat images of 1986, 2000, and 2016 were mapped. The results demonstrated that cultivated and settlement constituted the most extensive type of LULC in the study area and increased by 9% extent. It also revealed that a substantial expansion of bush land and bare land areas during the past 30 years. On the other hand, LULC classes that has high environmental importance such as grazing land and forest cover have reduced drastically through time with expanding cultivated and settlement during the same period. The grazing land in 1986 was about 11.1% of the total study area, and it had decreased to 5.7% in 2016. In contrast, cultivated and settlement increased from 45.6% in 1986 to 49.5% in 2016. Bush land increased from 14.8 to 21% in the same period, while forest cover declined from 8.9 to 2% in the same period. The root causes for LULC changes in this particular area include population growth, land tenure insecurity, and common property rights, persistent poverty, climate change, and lack of public awareness. Therefore, the causes for LULC changes have to be controlled, and sustainable resources use is essential; else, these scarce natural resource bases will soon be lost and will no longer be able to play their contribution in sustainable ecosystem services.Article HighlightsForest cover and grazing lands declined rapidly.Fluctuating trends in cultivated and settlement, bush land and bare land.Population pressure and associated demand are the main causes behind LULC changes in the study area.

Highlights

  • Land is a vital natural resource for human survival and the base for all terrestrial ecosystem services [1, 2]

  • The main aim of this study is to investigate land use/land cover (LULC) changes and their dynamics that occurred in the Gubalafto district between the years 1986 and 2016 using remote sensing and geographical information systems (GIS)

  • The result from digital image classification and change detection coupled with a field survey demonstrated that the study area had undergone a significant LULC change for the past 30 years

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Summary

Introduction

Land is a vital natural resource for human survival and the base for all terrestrial ecosystem services [1, 2]. African grassland, woodland, bush land and other vegetation covers have been transformed into agriculture and settlement area [8, 9]. In Africa, 5% of woodlands and grasslands and 16% of natural forest cover has disappeared during the period from 1975 to 2000; and more than 50,000 ­km of natural vegetation has lost per year [10]. The majority of vegetation cover has been changed into agricultural and settlement land covers [10]. LULC changes and its dynamics in Ethiopia have followed a similar trend, with significant implications for natural resource degradation and loss of ecosystem service [11,12,13,14]. The major LULC changes in Ethiopia occurred in highly populated areas, mainly in the highland areas of the country [11, 13, 15]

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