Lagos is the fastest growing mega-city in the world (UN, 2006), yet it lacks reliable, modern,
scientific monitoring techniques to effectively monitor and manage land use/cover changes
brought about by urbanization. The capabilities of satellite remote sensing in terms of large
spatial coverage, spatial and temporal resolutions adequate for these types of studies, as well
as the ability of GIS to handle spatial and non-spatial data, make it the optimal approach for
this research. A post-classification approach was adopted with a maximum likelihood
classifier algorithm. The Landsat Thematic Mapper (1984) and Landsat ETM (2000) were
merged with SPOT-PAN (2002) to improve classification accuracies and provide more
accurate maps for land use/cover change and analysis. This also made it possible to overcome
the problem of spectral confusion between some urban land use classes. The land cover
change map revealed that forest, low density residential and agricultural land uses are most
threatened, and most land allocated for these uses has been legally or illegally converted to
other land uses within and outside the metropolis. The research explored the underlining
socio-economic and political factors which are driving the rapid land use/cover change in
metropolitan Lagos, as well as the inter-relationship between population and spatial growth
with the aim of using remote sensing and GIS to provide much needed intelligence to achieve
sustainable urban and environmental development and planning in the study area.