Spatiotemporal Land Use/Land Cover Change, Driving Forces and Consequences in Ameya Woreda, Central, Ethiopia
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Date
2017-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Understanding of the land use/ land cover change (LULCC) has paramount importance for
sustainable development and setting out the strategies of natural resource management. The
present study illustrates the spatiotemporal land use/ land cover changes, driving forces and
consequences taking place in Ameya Woreda, Central, Ethiopia. Qualitative data were used to
investigate the causes and effects of land use/ land cover change. Landsat satellite imageries of
three different periods, i.e., Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) of 1986, 2001 and 2016 were
acquired from Global Land Cover Facility Site (GLCF) and earth explorer site (USGS) and
quantify the LULC changes that has taken the Ameya Woreda from 1986 to 2016 over a period of
30 years. Supervised classification methodology has been employed using maximum likelihood
technique of ERDAS 2014Software. The images of the study area were categorized into five
different LULCC classes namely vegetation, cultivated land, bare land, grass land and
settlement. The results revealed that during the last three decades, cultivated and settlement
lands have increased by 21.1% and 0.91% while vegetation, bare and grass lands have decreased
by 11.9%, 2.6% and 7.4% respectively. As the study explored population growth, expansion of
agricultural land, demand for fuel wood and construction materials and charcoal, and
inefficiency of natural resource and land management system were the main causes of LULCC at woreda and kebele level. Whereas, forest degradation, Loss of plant’s and animal’s species, land degradation, hydrological impact and shortage of animal feeding were the main consequences of land use/ land cover change.
Keywords: Land use/Land cover, driving forces, consequence, GIS, Remote sensing
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Keywords
Land Use/Land Cover, Driving Forces, Consequence, Remote Sensing, GIS