Detecting Land use/Land cover Change using Remote Sensing & GIS Techniques and Analysis of its Causes ,Consequences and trends in Ofla wereda, Tigray Region, Ethiopia

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Date

2014-06

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Addis Ababa University

Abstract

Land use/land cover (LULC) change is one of the challenges which strongly influence the process of agricultural development. The study intended to carry out land use /land cover changes, trends and their magnitude over the last 40 years using remote sensing and GIS and establish the main drivers of land use /land cover change in Ofla wereda of Tigray region. For the identification of land use/ land cover change landsat imagery of 1972, 1986 and 2013 were used to determine the change in land use/land cover using object based classification. In establishing the main drivers of land use/land cover change, the study utilized household questionnaire and a focus group discussion. A total of 362 respondents were randomly selected from the kebele’s where the land use/land cover change for the last 40 years is more than 60%, accordingly Sasela, Zata and Guara Kebeles were selected which satisfies the criteria. The object based classification result revealed that in 1972 MSS Landsat imagery, crop land (35.8%), grass land (19%), Forest land (43.7%) and water body (1.5%) were identified with their respective percentage. The change result showed a rapid reduction in forest cover of -49.2% and +18% increase occurred between the first (1972-1986) and second (1986-2013) study periods, respectively. Similarly water body decreased by -11.1% during the first and increased by +9.3% during the second period. On the contrary, crop land increased in the two periods by 31.7 % and 13.8% respectively. The analysis of the last 40 years in the study area revealed that about 48% of the landscape showed changes in LULC. Changes were also analyzed in relation to slope and agro ecological zone and it showed that in 1972, more than 69.2 % of the crop areas fall below 20° slope but in 2013 the percentage declined to 54.5% for the same slope indicating agriculture is expanding to the steep slopes and regarding agro ecological zone woina dega is more prone to change in the study area. From the analysis of the socio economic situation of households to identify the underlying causes of the change in land use/land cover, population growth and land tenure insecurity were identified as the major underlying causes. This study generally has shown that the recent advancement in spatial technology can provide a sound mechanism to quantify change at any scale. Keywords: GIS, LULC, MSS, Remote Sensing

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Keywords

GIS, LULC, MSS, Remote Sensing

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