Abstract
Land use and land cover (LULC) change through inappropriate agricultural practices and high human and livestock population pressure have led to severe land degradation in the Ethiopian highlands. This has led to further degradation such as biodiversity loss, deforestation, and soil erosion. The study examined woody vegetation diversity status and the impact of drivers of change across different LULC types and agroecological zones in Gilgel Tekeze catchment, northern Ethiopian highlands. LULC dynamics were assessed using GIS techniques on 1976, 1986, and 2008 satellite images. Vegetation data were collected from 135 sample plots (20 m × 20 m) from five LULC types, namely, forest, shrub-bush, grazing, settlement, and cultivated land, in the three agroecological zones; Kolla, Weyna-Dega, and Dega. Differences in vegetation structure and composition and their relationship to agroecological zones were tested using two-way ANOVA and PCA technique. The results show that vegetation structure and composition significantly differed across all LULC types in different agroecological zones particularly in sapling density, tree height, and shrub height and in each agroecological zone between forest land, shrub-bush land, and settlement area. Overall, Weyna-Dega agroecological zone and the shrub-bush land had more structural and compositional diversity than the other agroecological zones and LULC types.
Highlights
The Ethiopian highlands are subjected to important land degradation
The land use and land cover analysis indicates that forest land and shrub-bush land have decreased by 2.4 and 16.13 percent, respectively, between the years 1976 and 1986, while cultivated and settlement land have increased by 14.35 and 5.22 percent, respectively (Tables 2 and 3)
This suggests that the forest and shrub-bush lands were declining at an average rate of 0.24 and 1.61 percent per annum, respectively, while cultivated land and settlement areas increased at the rate of 1.44 and 0.52 percent per annum over the ten-year period
Summary
Several studies have shown that there were significant land use and land cover changes in the Ethiopian highlands during the second half of the 20th century [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Most of these studies pointed out that rugged topography, inappropriate agricultural practices, and high human and livestock population pressure have been the main facilitators for the land degradation processes in the highlands [7,8,9]. Serious trends of land degradation, resulting from the expansion of cultivation on steep slopes at the expense of natural forests, have been observed in the north-western highlands [7]
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