Evaluating the Land Use and Land Cover Dynamics in Borena Woreda of South Wollo Highlands, Ethiopia

Type Journal Article - Journal of Sustainable Development in Africa
Title Evaluating the Land Use and Land Cover Dynamics in Borena Woreda of South Wollo Highlands, Ethiopia
Author(s)
Volume 13
Issue 1
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2011
Page numbers 87-107
URL http://www.jsd-africa.com/Jsda/V13No1_Spring2011_A/PDF/Evaluating the Land Use and Land Cover​Dynamics in Borena Woreda (Shiferaw).pdf
Abstract
This paper describes the land use and land cover dynamics in Borena Woreda of South Wollo Highlands of Ethiopia and its implication by using the framework DPSIR - Driving Forces-Pressures-State-Impact-Response in a Geographical Information System (GIS) context. The integration of satellite remote sensing and GIS was an effective approach for analyzing the direction, rate, and spatial pattern of land use change. Three land use and land cover maps were produced by analyzing multi temporal remotely sensed images of three dates from Landsat satellite imageries. The result shows five major land use and land cover types. These include forest, shrub or bush, grass, agricultural, and bare land. In between (1972 to 1985), there was a dramatic expansion of agricultural land followed by bare land however, shrub land, forest land and grass land shows a reduction in aerial coverage. On the other hand in between 1985 to 2003, the same is true for agricultural land, bare land, shrub land and forest land but grass land shows a slight expansion in the aerial coverage due to the conversion of forest and shrub land to grass land. The major driving forces for these changes were natural factors such as steep slope, drought and Climate change. The human driving factors include Population growth and density, over intensification of land use, farm size, land tenure status, and policies on land use. These factors results in various forces and strong effect to change the quantity and quality of land use .The implication of this study includes ecosystems and biodiversity loss, central ownership of natural resources, the breakdown of traditional structures and consequent difficulties in the form of insecurity in individual use of fallow lands, open access to grasslands, inability to protect and manage land resources, inappropriate development strategies, and lake of land use planning.

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