article · SN Applied Sciences
Tracking changes in land use and land cover over a thirty-year span between 1986 and 2016 in the Gubalafto district of northeastern Ethiopia reveals substantial environmental transformation. Satellite imagery combined with geographical information systems and local community surveys mapped shifts across five categories: cultivated land and settlements, forests, grazing land, bush land, and bare land. Over this period, cultivated and settlement areas expanded from 45.6 percent to 49.5 percent of the total area, while bush land grew from 14.8 percent to 21 percent. In contrast, ecologically critical categories suffered severe reductions: grazing lands contracted from 11.1 percent to 5.7 percent, and forest cover dropped steeply from 8.9 percent to just 2 percent. Community input indicates that key drivers behind these shifts include population expansion, land tenure insecurity, poverty, climate change, and limited public awareness.
Understanding how land use changes over decades is critical for preserving ecosystems that local communities depend upon for food, livestock, and natural resources. When forests and grazing areas shrink rapidly, natural resources deplete and vulnerability to environmental shocks increases. Documenting these patterns and their social drivers provides evidence necessary for local authorities and conservationists to design targeted resource management strategies.
The findings provide observational baseline data that land-use planners, conservation organisations, and government agencies can apply to target ecosystem restoration. While this work represents early-stage applied research rather than a direct commercial product, the integrated mapping approach combining satellite imagery with local surveys could support the development of tailored environmental monitoring and land management consulting tools.
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Abstract Mapping and quantifying the status of Land use/Land cover (LULC) changes and drivers of change are important for identifying vulnerable areas for change and designing sustainable ecosystem services. This study analyzed the status of LULC changes and key drivers of change for the last 30 years through a combination of remote sensing and GIS with the surveying of the local community understanding of LULC patterns and drivers in the Gubalafto district, Northeastern Ethiopia. Five major LULC types (cultivated and settlement, forest cover, grazing land, bush land and bare land) from Landsat images of 1986, 2000, and 2016 were mapped. The results demonstrated that cultivated and settlement constituted the most extensive type of LULC in the study area and increased by 9% extent. It also revealed that a substantial expansion of bush land and bare land areas during the past 30 years. On the other hand, LULC classes that has high environmental importance such as grazing land and forest cover have reduced drastically through time with expanding cultivated and settlement during the same period. The grazing land in 1986 was about 11.1% of the total study area, and it had decreased to 5.7% in 2016. In contrast, cultivated and settlement increased from 45.6% in 1986 to 49.5% in 2016. Bush land increased from 14.8 to 21% in the same period, while forest cover declined from 8.9 to 2% in the same period. The root causes for LULC changes in this particular area include population growth, land tenure insecurity, and common property rights, persistent poverty, climate change, and lack of public awareness. Therefore, the causes for LULC changes have to be controlled, and sustainable resources use is essential; else, these scarce natural resource bases will soon be lost and will no longer be able to play their contribution in sustainable ecosystem services. Article Highlights Forest cover and grazing lands declined rapidly. Fluctuating trends in cultivated and settlement, bush land and bare land. Population pressure and associated demand are the main causes behind LULC changes in the study area.
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DOI: 10.1007/s42452-021-04915-8
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