Abstract:
The study described the land use and land cover resources variability in WanthoaWoreda from
2005 to 2019 using Geographical Information System (GIS) and remote sensing. Satellite remote
sensing and GIS acts as an effective approach for analyzing the direction, rate and spatial
pattern of land use dynamics. Land sat TM for the period 2005, 2010 and 2019 was used to
prepare the land use/land cover (LULC) map for different periods. The methodology that was
employed consisted of an object-oriented classification approach for LULC mapping and a postclassification change-detection technique for quantifying the changes for seven major land use
and land cover types which included Settlements land, Agricultural land, Grass land, Forest
land, water occupied land, Shrub land, Woodland in the area. And the result was analyzed using
this classification.
Accordingly the study founded that change was detected in different land use class between 2005
and 2019 which indicated that grass land, wood land shrub land and forest land cover class lost
much of their land in the expend of agriculture land and settlement land. this showed that these
land cover for the sack of others land use decrease by -1522,-728,-426 and -1030 hectare of land
respectively between 2005 and 2019. In other hand these two land use types which include
agriculture land and settlement land receive much of their gains from the above mentioned land
use types by +3184 and +4434 hectare of land respectively within the same time frame that’s
2005-2019. Within this study, the researcher found that, the entire classes of the study have gone
some change in which most of the land cover received negative transformation to other land use.
Therefore, within the entire 15yrs of study, agriculture and settlement receive a positive change
which is 6000 and 5500 hectare of land that’s is (9.20 %) and 11.89% of land respectively while
others land cover which include grassland, woodland, forest land, water and shrub land received
a negative change that’s -2.44%,-12.92%,-70.31%,-26.66% and -35.78% respectively.
