Analysis and prediction of land use/ land cover changes and its impacts on the corridors of cattle grazing routes in Benue state, Nigeria

Abstract

ABSTRACT It is becoming increasingly common for cattle grazing routes to be encroached upon and changed to other land uses, and there is no clear indication of just how far these changes will go. The dynamics of land cover and how land is being used in the corridor of cattle grazing routes have received a great deal of attention. In view of this, it is imperative to assess past and future land use and land cover (LU/LC). The study aims to examine the trajectory of LU/LC changes in the cattle grazing route corridor in Benue state. The study used Landsat satellite images from 1980, 2000, and 2020, with a combination of field observations and interviews. A 200-meter buffer was created around the grazing routes, which were used to subset the Landsat images. The Random Forest supervised classification algorithm was used to classify the Landsat images. Cellular Automata (CA) and Land Change Modeler (LCM) were used to simulate the future LU/LC pattern of the grazing routes for 2050. Based on the findings, cropland and built-up areas had grown dramatically at the expense of forest and grassland. Cropland increased at an average rate of 18.18 km2/yr between 1980 and 2000. The study recommends stringent measures to regulate the causes of LU/LC changes in cattle grazing corridors.