Assessment of land use land coverchange using gis and remote sensing technologies; a case study of wanthoa woreda,G ambella regional states, western Ethiopia

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.