Elaboration of the Land use Land Cover Plan of the Subdivision of Monatele in Cameroon

Abstract

Over the past years, humans have directly or indirectly affected the Earth’s surface through various activities. These changes in terrestrial ecosystems are closely linked with the issue of the sustainability of socio- economic development since they affect essential parts of our natural capital such as climate, soils, vegetation, water resources and biodiversity. Land Cover has undergone several changes in Cameroon since its independence in 1960. One of the major drivers of this change is urbanization. Uncontrolled, rapid urbanization has had many negative impacts on the center region of Cameroon, around the continuum of its headquarter and in Cameroon metropolises such as anarchical constructions, pollution and traffic congestions. Faced with these urbanization issues, planners need to know the spatiotemporal trends of Land Use Land Cover for the past, present and have predictions of possible future patterns in order to better orient their planning. This is possible through the establishment of Land Use Land Cover maps. Remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems represent a cost-effective method for accomplishing this. In this work, we examine the case of Monatélé, a growing city around the Yaoundé metropolis. Satellite images from 2010, 2017, 2022 were downloaded and classified into five classes using the Support Vector Machine algorithm of image classification. It was found that between 2010 and 2022, settlements have increase continuously from 1.61% to 4.28%, water has decreased continuously from 9.81% to 6.72%, forest has experienced a net decrease from 73.77% to 68.25%, agriculture has experienced a net increase from 12.44% to 16.92%, while Bare Land has had a net increase from 2.38% to 3.82%. of the total surface area of the subdivision of Monatélé. Predictions made for 2029 and 2035 show that by 2035, settlements would have increased to 6.58%, water would have decreased to 4.58%, forest would have decreased to 61.22%, agriculture will take 25.19%, and bare land would have almost remained unvaried, taking up 2.43% of the surface area from 2010 to 2035. This will represent for Monatélé an increase in anarchical settlements, an increased loss in biodiversity, an increased pollution, an increase in demand for basic commodities, and an increased pressure on natural resources, if no planning measures are put in place, though it may represent an increase in human capital, an increase in local employment opportunities, a reduction of groceries expenditures.