Urban expansion and agricultural land loss: a GIS-Based analysis and policy implications in Hawassa city, Ethiopia

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This study investigated the historical and future trends of urban expansion and its subsequent impact on agricultural land-use in Hawassa city, Ethiopia. A time-series of remote-sensing imageries from Landsat Thematic Mapper for the years 1984, 1990, 2000, and 2010 and Operational Land Imager for 2021 were used to extract the LULC information from the study area. Seven major land-cover classes’ waterbody, built-up, agricultural land, wetland, grassland, woody vegetation, and agroforestry were identified with visual image interpretation along with supervised image classification techniques using the maximum-likelihood algorithm for the study years. The urban and agricultural lands were then extracted from the original LULC data to quantify the extent, rates, and number of area conversion between the two. The Land Change Modeler module of TerrSet software was used to predict the spatial extents of built-up and agricultural lands in 2030 and 2050. The results showed that there have been significant changes between the LULC types in Hawassa city within the past 37 years, from which built-up and agricultural land have shown the most prevalent changes. It showed that built-up land has increased from 584.73 ha in 1,984–3,939.03 ha in 2021, representing a 573.65% increase at an annual growth rate of 15.50%. However, agricultural land decreased from 8,324.64 ha to 3,595.68 ha in the respective years, with a 56.81% decrease at a rate of −1.54% each year. A total of 3,148.74 ha (37.82%) of agricultural land was converted into built-up land within the past 37 years (85.10 ha per year, a rate of 1.02%. The built-up land is projected to increase to 5,009.85 ha and 6,794.73 ha from 2021 to 2030 and 2050, with annual growth rates of 3.02% and 2.50%, respectively. In the same years, agricultural land will decrease to 2,849.58 ha and 2033.46 ha by 2.31% and 1.50% annually, respectively, from which 64.76 ha (1.80%) and 48.41 ha (1.35%) will be converted into built-up land, respectively. Future planning and development in the city should consider the rapid increase in built-up land toward agricultural land areas and develop appropriate adaptation mechanisms for the local community, which is highly dependent on agriculture.