Abstract:
Understanding land use/cover and associated ecosystem services and livelihood strategies are
becoming an important discussion point at local, regional and global levels. The issue is
particularly so in developing countries like Ethiopia where anthropogenic driven land
use/cover changes are apparent. These studies aims at detecting land use/cover change
(LULC) over a period of 30 years and assess associated ecosystem services and livelihood
strategies changes at Walga watershed South West Shewa, Oromia regional state. Remote
sensing was employed to quantify land use/cover for past three decades (1985-2015) and
household survey was employed for collecting associated changes in ecosystem services (ES)
and livelihood strategies in the study area. The result shows that there was a drastic shrink in
forest, grazing land, water body and shrub land between1985-2015. For instances, forest,
grazing land, water body and shrub land loss were estimated to be -3329ha, -278ha, -27ha
and -424ha respectively, while crop and enset (Ensete ventricosum) farmlands, settlements
and degraded lands were increased at the expense of the forest, grazing, water bodies and
shrub land cover types by 1631ha, 1543ha, 122ha and 763ha respectively. A dramatic change
of forest conversion to crop and enset farmlands, degraded land and settlements were
observed in the study area. The implication of these LULC changes which assessed by
household survey revealed that there was extreme change in ES which provided by each
LULC in the study area. During the first 15 years of the study period forest was ranked as
major source of soil and water conservation, timber, fuel wood, fodder, recreation, climate
regulation and ecotourism, crop farmland as a source of food, water body as source of
recreation and ecotourism, spiritual services, grazing land as source of fodder; however in
the current period the services of ecosystem losses due forest degradation, shortage of
grazing land and soil erosion problem in the area, inclination to mainly rely on Enset farming
as major source of food and fodder were observed. The total simultaneous change regulation
and cultural services were showed strong positive correlation with land cover change in area
in-contrary to provision services which shows weak correlation due to high coverage of land
degradation results fertility loss in the area. Likewise, the livelihoods of local community
shows similar trend as a result of LULC change. The result shows the livelihood strategies of
the households had changed from sole farm dependent livelihood to mixed livelihoods
strategies. In general there was a drastic change in LULC of Walga watershed for past three
decades which has brought about a temporal change in ecosystem services and the livelihood
strategies of the local communities
