Evaluating The Land Use And Land Cover Dynamics In Borena Woreda South Wollo Highlands, Ethiopia

Abstract

This paper describes the land use and land cover dynamics in Borena Woreda of South Wollo Highlands of Ethiopia and implications by using the DPSIR framework(Driving Forces-Pressures-State-Impact-Response) in a Geographical Information System (GIS) context. The integration of satellite remote sensing and GIS was an effective approach for analyzing the direction, rate, and spatial pattern of land use change. Three land use and land cover maps were produced by analyzing remotely sensed images of Landsat satellite imageries at three time points (1972,1985,and 2003) . The result shows five major land use and land cover types. These include forest, shrub or bush, grassland, agricultural land and bare land. Between (1972 to 1985), there was a dramatic expansion of agricultural land followed by bare land while, shrub land, forest land and grass land showed reduction in coverage. The period between 1985 to 2003,saw similar changes in agricultural land, bare land, shrub land and forest land cover but grass land showed a slight expansion in coverage due to the conversion of forest and shrub land to grass land. The major driving forces for these changes were natural factors such as steep slope, drought and Climate change. The human driving forces for these changes steep slopes, drought and climate change. The human driving factors include population growth and density, over-use of land, farm size, land tenure status and land use. These factors exert pressure and impacts on land use. Implications include biodiversity loss central ownership of natural resources , the breakdown of traditional structure and consequent difficulties in the use o fallow lands, open access to grass lands, inability to protect and manage land resources , inappropriate development strategies and la ck of land use planning. Key words : land use/land cover dynamics, DPSIR model, remote sensing, Ethiopia.