Abstract:
Land use land cover change is the general term for human and natural modification of the earth’s terrestrial surface at a variety of spatial
and temporal scale. This change lends the need of knowing the type of change, when and where they occur with their extent and rates.
Hence, effective information regarding the environmental responses of land use land cover changes are important to hydrologists, land use
planners, watershed management and decision makers to formulate and implement effective and appropriate response strategies to
minimize the undesirable effects of future land use land cover change. Consequently, this study was aimed at assessing the land use land
cover changes of Gilgel Gibe catchment between 1987, 2001 and 2010. Particularly, the study have analyzed land use land cover changes
that were assumed to take place in the Catchment for the past 24years. The Land use maps of 1987, 2001 and 2010 were derived from
satellite images and processed using ERDAS Imagine 9.1 and ArcGIS10.1 software. Change detection analysis and accuracy assessment
was done after Image processing and classification with spatial analysis tools. The outcome of land cover change analysis shows an
increment of agricultural land from 54.51% to 56.54%, Urban and built up area from 2.22% to 4.06%, range land from 30.02% to 31.55%
while decreasing proportion of forest land from 12.82% to 7.63%, Water body from 0.42% to 0.22% for the recent period between 2001
and 2010. The accuracy assessment of land cover classification indicates an overall accuracy of 83.87%, 82.18%, 89.29% and kappa
coefficient of 0.7848, 0.7691, and 0.86 respectively for 1987, 2001 and 2010 map.
