Land Use and Land Cover Change Detection Using Remote Geospatial Techniques: A Case Study of an Urban City in Southwestern, Nigeria

Abstract

Many cities in developing countries are experiencing ecosystem modification and change. Today, about 10 million hectares of the world’s forest cover have been converted to other land uses. In Nigeria, there is an estimated increase of 8.75 million ha of cropland and decrease of about 1.71 million ha of forest cover between 1995 to 2020, indicating that Nigeria has been undergoing a wide range of land use and land cover changes. This paper analyses the changes in land use/cover in Ila Orangun, Southwestern, Nigeria from 1986 to 2018, with a view to providing adequate information on the pattern and trend of land use and land cover changes for proper monitoring and effective planning. The study utilized satellite images from Landsat 1986, 2002 and 2018. Remote sensing and Geographical Information System techniques as well as supervised image classification method were used to assess the magnitude of changes in the city over the study period. The results show that 26.36% of forest cover and 44.48% of waterbody were lost between the period of 1986 and 2018. There was a rapid increase in crop land by 365.7% and gradual increase in built-up areas by 103.85% at an annual rate of 3.25%. Forest was the only land cover type that recorded a constant reduction in areal extent. The study concluded that the changes in land use and land cover is a result of anthropogenic activities in the study area.