- 期刊
- OpenAccess
GIS Assessment of Land Use and Land Cover Changes in OBIO/AKPOR L.G.A., Rivers State, Nigeria
並列摘要
The study assesses the spatio-temporal land use and land cover changes between 1986 and 2000 for the whole Obio/Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers State, Nigeria covering about 270.86 km2. Landsat images of 30 m×30 m resolution of both 1986 and 2000 were used whereby seven land use types were detected and captured as polygons (shapefiles) in Arcview 3.3 version after the images have been geo-rectified. The land use types include farmland, built up area, water, sparse vegetation, primary forest, secondary forest and mangrove. The area in square kilometers of each land use type in each year was calculated and thereafter the change was determined by subtracting the area of the same land use type in 1986 from 2000 and the percentage of change is therefore calculated. In addition, the probability of change of twenty years was also determined from one land use type to another using Markovian Transition Estimator (MTE) from IDRISI Andes. The study reveals that farmland, mangrove, primary forest and sparse vegetation reduced over time by 45.34, 37.06, 43.06 and 8.09%, respectively while secondary forest, built up area and water increased by 5.88, 74.55 and 3.43%, respectively. It is also projected by MTE that in 2020 farmland has the probability of 0.570 (57%) of changing to secondary forest and 0.154 (15.4%) of changing to built up area. Primary forest has the probability of 0.186 (18.6%) to change to built up area. It is recommended among others that laws should be promulgated to prevent unlawful expansion of construction of any form and that the people in the communities in the study area should be enlightened and educated on the effects of deforestation on the environment.