Abstract
The objective of this study was to analyze patterns, dynamics and processes of land-use/cover changes in the transboundary Mara River Basin in East Africa. We specifically focused on deforestation and expansion of agriculture in the watershed. The intensity analysis approach was used to analyze data from satellite imagery-derived land-use/cover maps. Results indicate that swap change accounted for more than 50% of the overall change, which shows a very dynamic landscape transformation. Transition from closed forest to open forest was found to be a dominant landscape change, as opposed to a random change. Similarly, transition from open forest to small-scale agriculture was also found to be a dominant transition. This suggests a trend (pathway) of deforestation from closed forest to small-scale agriculture, with open forest as a transitional land cover. The observed deforestation may be attributed to continuous encroachment and a series of excisions of the forest reserve. Transition from rangeland to mechanized agriculture was found to be a dominant land-use change, which was attributed to change in land tenure. These findings are crucial for designing strategies and integrated watershed management policies to arrest further deforestation in the forest reserves as well as to sustainably control expansion of agriculture.
Highlights
Land-use/cover change is a topic that has in the recent years gained interest because of its role as a driver of environmental change [1,2]
This study uses the Intensity Analysis approach to examine the patterns, dynamics and processes of land-use change that occurred within Mara River Basin in East Africa in four consecutive time intervals between 1976 and 2014
We mainly focused on transitions among forest, agriculture, and rangelands to reveal more details on deforestation and expansion of agriculture in the basin
Summary
Land-use/cover change is a topic that has in the recent years gained interest because of its role as a driver of environmental change [1,2]. It is of interest to many fields of science including hydrology and related water resources management [3,4,5,6], biology with special focus on biodiversity [7], conservation [8,9], and agriculture including (agro)forestry [10]. Expansion of agricultural land is one of the main causes of land use/cover changes. Forests and grassland have been the main targets for conversion to agricultural cultivation [12,13,14]. Gibbs et al [15], for example, estimated that 55% of new agricultural land in the tropics between 1980 and 2000 came from intact forests while a further
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