Abstract:
Quantifying and managing urban sprawl in the future is critical for ensuring remedies for its
negative impacts on the livelihood of agricultural communities. Accordingly, this study aims to
quantify urban sprawl and assess its impact on the livelihood of urban fringe farming communities
by applying geospatial technologies to the cases of Shishinda Town, Kaffa Zone, and the Southwest
Ethiopian Region. Thus, to achieve this objective, the study utilized Landsat images of study years
(2002, 2012, and 2022) by applying supervised image classification techniques with a supported
vector machine learning algorithm. Land use and land cover change detection, Urban Expansion
Intensity Index (UEII), and Shannon’s entropy models are used for spatial data analysis. Whereas
the livelihood status of the household is assessed by using a sustainable rural livelihood approach
by applying the selected indicators of five livelihood assets that were derived from the data
gathered through household surveys. According to the study's findings, the built-up area increased
by 436% during the study period, while agricultural and bare land decreased by 35% and 68%,
respectively. The direction of built-up expansion was highly observed in the southwest and
northeast directions. The values of the Urban Expansion Intensity Index for the whole study period
are 0.85, and this indicates that the town is expanding at a medium speed. The relative Shannon’s
entropy values were scaled from 0.497 to 0.892 between 2002 and 2022. Thus, the results confirm
that the study area is experiencing dispersed urban expansion toward agricultural land and that
it is negatively affecting the overall livelihood assets of farming communities by 52.5%, which is
a statistically significant level at p = 0.01. Thus, the study suggested that the concerned body
should sustainably manage this extended urban expansion and supportive measures should be
taken to improve the livelihood of affected urban fringe farmers.
