Abstract
Increased anthropogenic activities in the Little Ruaha River Catchment have modulated the catchment condition, nevertheless, the future changes as a result of increased anthropogenic activities are unknown. Understanding the future changes is vitally important for the design of appropriate strategies towards sustainable management of the catchment resources. This study applied Remote Sensing and GIS techniques (Jensen & Lulla, 1987) to assess the historical long-term changes in land use and land cover using Landsat satellite images of 1990, 2005 and 2015, and modelled the future change in land use and land cover up to 2040 using the stochastic CA-Markov chain (Almeida et al., 2005). The historical land use and land cover change detection results indicate that between 1990 and 2005 the area under forest changed from 39,872 ha to 22,957 ha, woodland changed from 109,692 ha to 72,809 ha, wetland decreased from 19,157 ha to 11,785 ha, the cultivated land increased from 106,782 ha to 109,047 ha, likewise, the built-up area increased from 9408 ha to 11,674 ha. Results between 2005 and 2015 show the substantial changes where the forest decline from 22,957 ha to 15,950 ha, woodland decreased from 72,809 ha to 58,554 ha and the wetland changed from 11,785 ha to 5622 ha. Cultivated land and built up area increased from 109,047 ha and 11,674 ha to 143,468 ha and 13,765 ha respectively. Generally, the study has revealed the substantial decline in forest, woodland and wetland by 23,922 ha, 51,138 ha and 13,535 ha respectively, and an increase of cultivated land and built up area by 36,668 ha and 4357 ha respectively in 15 years, between 1990 and 2015. The predicted future land use and cover for the next 15 years (2040) showed an overall increase in cultivated land, built up area, grassland and bushland to 24.82%, 2.24%, 25.18% and 20.41% respectively, and a decrease in forest, woodland and wetland in the order of 1.87%, 7.87% and 0.03% respectively. The study concludes that, there have been significant changes in land use and cover in the catchment which likely to impend the sustainability of the catchment productivity, hence recommends the holistic system thinking and analysis approach in management and utilization of catchment resources.
Highlights
The major changes in land use and land cover (LULC) are a result of natural resources utilization
This paper reports on a case study that has been conducted to understand the changes in land use and land cover in Little Ruaha River Catchment, Tanzania for the periods 1990 and 2015, and the predicted the future changes in LULC up to 2040
This study investigated the land use and land cover dynamics in the Little Ruaha River catchment
Summary
The major changes in land use and land cover (LULC) are a result of natural resources utilization. In most of the African countries, in the Sub-Saharan Africa, their livelihood depends on the utilization of natural resources from the forest and wetlands (Adger, 2007; Majule, 2013). This dependency tied with anthropogenic activities have been going on and intensified during the past millennium (Soka & Nzunda, 2014). The continued utilization to meet human needs has resulted in an observable pattern of change in the context of land use and land cover over time. The vegetation cover is one of the important factors which partitions the rainfall into various hydrologic components such as surface runoff, base flow, ground water flow, evapotranspiration, etc., the land use change pattern studies play a paramount role in catchment management and hydrological modelling (Lin et al, 2008)
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