Impact of tertiary educational institution on the spatial expansion of Ekpoma town, Nigeria

This study seeks to address the relational impact of educational institution on the spatiotemporal growth of Ekpoma town. It examines the “urban growth” effects that the tertiary institution has on its site location. Landsat Imageries of Ekpoma town were downloaded and imported into ArcGIS software ArcMap 10.8, where the Supervised Maximum Likelihood Analysis was carried out on the datasets. Multiple linear regression was used to determine the rate of contribution of the various university campuses to the spatial expansion of each zone and linear regression analysis was used to determine the rate of contribution of the spatial densification of AAU campuses to the spatial expansion of Ekpoma town. The Land-use type of interest was the built-up areas. The town was delineated into three zones, each with a University campus. Zone A has the Main Ambrose Alli University (AAU) Campus, College of Medicine in Zone B, and Emuado campus in Zone C. The land use classification analysis was performed for the university campuses and Ekpoma town, for the years 1987, 2002, and 2023. The result shows that there is a strong positive linear relationship between the spatial densification of AAU campuses and the spatial expansion of Ekpoma town, with an R² value of 0.986. This implies that for every 1km² densification of the campuses, there is an increase of 32.030km² in the spatial expansion of Ekpoma town. Thus, it was projected using the regression model that by the year 2043, the spatial extent of Ekpoma town would be 67.9462 km². These findings are valuable for informing existing land use and urban planning practices. Understanding the complex dynamics of urban expansion would help create a sustainable and resilient growth of the town in the future, avoiding possible pitfalls in urban development initiatives in the town.