scholarly journals Three Decades of Land Cover Change in East Africa

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 150
Author(s):  
Eric L. Bullock ◽  
Sean P. Healey ◽  
Zhiqiang Yang ◽  
Phoebe Oduor ◽  
Noel Gorelick ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Cover ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Land Cover Change ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Miombo Woodlands ◽  
Natural Ecosystems ◽  
Population Growth Rates ◽  
Scale Reduction ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Regional Land

Population growth rates in Sub-Saharan East Africa are among the highest in the world, creating increasing pressure for land cover conversion. To date, however, there has been no comprehensive assessment of regional land cover change, and most long-term trends have not yet been quantified. Using a designed sample of satellite-based observations of historical land cover change, we estimate the areas and trends in nine land cover classes from 1998 to 2017 in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zambia. Our analysis found an 18,154,000 (±1,580,000) ha, or 34.8%, increase in the area of cropland in East Africa. Conversion occurred primarily from Open Grasslands, Wooded Grasslands, and Open Forests, causing a large-scale reduction in woody vegetation classes. We observed far more conversion (by approximately 20 million hectares) of woody classes to less-woody classes than succession in the direction of increasing trees and shrubs. Spatial patterns within our sample highlight regional land cover conversion hotspots, such as the Central Zambezian Miombo Woodlands, as potential areas of concern related to the conservation of natural ecosystems. Our findings reflect a rapidly growing population that is moving into new areas, with a 43.5% increase in the area of Settlements over the three-decade period. Our results show the areas and ecoregions most impacted by three decades of human development, both spatially and statistically.

Historical and Future Land-Cover Change in a Municipality of Ghana

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (9) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emmanuel M. Attua ◽  
Joshua B. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Land Cover ◽  
Land Cover Change ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Land Cover Changes ◽  
Natural Ecosystems ◽  
Land Administration

Abstract Urban land-cover change is increasing dramatically in most developing nations. In Africa and in the New Juaben municipality of Ghana in particular, political stability and active socioeconomic progress has pushed the urban frontier into the countryside at the expense of the natural ecosystems at ever-increasing rates. Using Landsat satellite imagery from 1985 to 2003, the study found that the urban core expanded by 10% and the peri-urban areas expanded by 25% over the period. Projecting forward to 2015, it is expected that urban infrastructure will constitute 70% of the total land area in the municipality. Giving way to urban expansion were losses in open woodlands (19%), tree fallow (9%), croplands (4%), and grass fallow (3%), with further declines expected for 2015. Major drivers of land-cover changes are attributed to demographic changes and past microeconomic policies, particularly the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP); the Economic Recovery Programme (ERP); and, more recently, the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS). Pluralistic land administration, complications in the land tenure systems, institutional inefficiencies, and lack of capacity in land administration were also key drivers of land-cover changes in the New Juaben municipality. Policy recommendations are presented to address the associated challenges.

scholarly journals Drivers and trajectories of land cover change in East Africa: Human and environmental interactions from 6000 years ago to present

2018 ◽  
Vol 178 ◽  
pp. 322-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob Marchant ◽  
Suzi Richer ◽  
Oliver Boles ◽  
Claudia Capitani ◽  
Colin J. Courtney-Mustaphi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Cover ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Land Cover Change ◽  
Environmental Interactions

scholarly journals Four Decades of Land-Cover Change on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska: Detecting Disturbance-Influenced Vegetation Shifts Using Landsat Legacy Data

Land ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 382
Author(s):  
Carson Baughman ◽  
Rachel Loehman ◽  
Dawn Magness ◽  
Lisa Saperstein ◽  
Rosemary Sherriff
Keyword(s):  
Land Cover ◽  
Land Cover Change ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Forest Canopy ◽  
Tree Cover ◽  
Forest Loss ◽  
Environmental Response ◽  
Kenai Peninsula ◽  
Vegetation Shifts ◽  
Forest Land Cover

Across Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, disturbance events have removed large areas of forest over the last half century. Simultaneously, succession and landscape evolution have facilitated forest regrowth and expansion. Detecting forest loss within known pulse disturbance events is often straightforward given that reduction in tree cover is a readily detectable and measurable land-cover change. Land-cover change is more difficult to quantify when disturbance events are unknown, remote, or environmental response is slow in relation to human observation. While disturbance events and related land-cover change are relatively instant, assessing patterns of post-disturbance succession requires long term monitoring. Here, we describe a method for classifying land cover and quantifying land-cover change over time, using Landsat legacy imagery for three historical eras on the western Kenai Peninsula: 1973–2002, 2002–2017, and 1973–2017. Scenes from numerous Landsat sensors, including summer and winter seasons, were acquired between 1973 and 2017 and used to classify vegetation cover using a random forest classifier. Land-cover type was summarized by era and combined to produce a dataset capturing spatially explicit land-cover change at a moderate 30-m resolution. Our results document large-scale forest loss across the study area that can be attributed to known disturbance events including beetle kill and wildfire. Despite numerous and extensive disturbances resulting in forest loss, we estimate that the study area has experienced net forest gain over the duration of our study period due to reforestation within large fire events that predate this study. Transition between forest and graminoid non-forest land cover including wetlands and herbaceous uplands is the most common land-cover change—representing recruitment of a graminoid dominated understory following forest loss and the return of forest canopy given sufficient time post-disturbance.

scholarly journals Analyses of Land Cover Change Trajectories Leading to Tropical Forest Loss: Illustrated for the West Kutai and Mahakam Ulu Districts, East Kalimantan, Indonesia

Land ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carina van der Laan ◽  
Arif Budiman ◽  
Judith Verstegen ◽  
Stefan Dekker ◽  
Wiwin Effendy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Cover ◽  
Land Cover Change ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Forest Loss ◽  
The West ◽  
East Kalimantan ◽  
Open Forest ◽  
Over Time

In Indonesia, land cover change for agriculture and mining is threatening tropical forests, biodiversity and ecosystem services. However, land cover change is highly dynamic and complex and varies over time and space. In this study, we combined Landsat-based land cover (change) mapping, pixel-to-pixel cross tabulations and expert knowledge to analyze land cover change and forest loss in the West Kutai and Mahakam Ulu districts in East Kalimantan from 1990–2009. We found that about one-third of the study area changed in 1990–2009 and that the different types of land cover changes in the study area increased and involved more diverse and characteristic trajectories in 2000–2009, compared to 1990–2000. Degradation to more open forest types was dominant, and forest was mostly lost due to trajectories that involved deforestation to grasslands and shrubs (~17%), and to a lesser extent due to trajectories from forest to mining and agriculture (11%). Trajectories from forest to small-scale mixed cropland and smallholder rubber occurred more frequently than trajectories to large-scale oil palm or pulpwood plantations; however, the latter increased over time. About 11% of total land cover change involved multiple-step trajectories and thus “intermediate” land cover types. The combined trajectory analysis in this paper thus contributes to a more comprehensive analysis of land cover change and the drivers of forest loss, which is essential to improve future land cover projections and to support spatial planning.

Land use and land cover change and its implications in Kagera river basin, East Africa

2014 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 209-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robel Ogbaghebriel Berakhi ◽  
Tonny J. Oyana ◽  
Samuel Adu-Prah
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Land Cover Change ◽  
River Basin
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