Analysis of land cover land use change in the greater Gaborone area of South Eastern Botswana

Abstract

Changes in land cover land use (LCLU) have long been considered to be among the many factors responsible for global environmental challenges. This study focused on assessing LCLU changes in the Greater Gaborone area of South Eastern Botswana between 1988 and 2022. The study employed remote sensing (RS) and geographic information systems (GIS) tools for analyzing LCLU changes in the study area during the study period. Landsat images of 1988 and 2002 and Sentinel-2A images of 2022 were used to detect LCLU changes. Image classification was done using a Supervised classification approach based on a Maximum Likelihood Classifier. Six LCLU types such as water body, trees dominated, cropland, shrubland, bare land, and built-up, were identified in the area. Post Classification Comparison (PCC) approach was used to detect LCLU change during the study period. Shrubland class was found to be the dominant LCLU type in the study area. A significant gain was observed in the built-up class (75.12 km2), while significant losses were observed in shrubland (24.16 km2) and trees dominated (33.32 km2) classes in the entire study period. Given the rapid increase in built-up areas, this recommends that land managers and policymakers should invest in implementing sustainable land management interventions to prevent undesirable LCLU changes.