Geospatial Technologies Based Assessment of Urban Sprawl on Urban Fringe Agricultural Land and Its Impact on the Livelihood of Farm Communities: Case of Shishinda Town; Kaffa Zone, South West Ethiopia Peoples Region

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.