Analyze Trends and Drivers of Land Use Land Cover Dynamics in Dawa River Basin since 1989, Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Land cover alteration is major issue of global environmental change. This change is due to human intervention for various activities. The change is a gradual process and it takes time depending on the drivers. Basin level land cover dynamic has been supposed to be the earliest of all human that brought environmental changes. Thus, trends and drivers of land use land cover dynamics in basin are the key considerations in the research. To detect the trends of the change, TM (1989), ETM+ (2004) and ETM – OLI (2019) Land sats were used. The trends of land cover dynamics that happened from 1989 to 2019 were analyzed using ERDAS 2015 and arc map 10.5. In addition, the drivers that supposed to accelerate the changes were identified by questionnaire, focus group discussion and interviews. In the period comparisons between 1989 and 2019, the farmlands & settlements and bush & shrub lands are increased by 4684.36 and 10496.28 km² with rate of 104.09 and 233.25 km² per year respectively. In contrast, the forest areas and grasslands & degraded lands are decreased 6770.20 and 8410.44km² with rate change of 528.83 and 186.89 km² per year respectively. Regarding to the factors that accelerated the changes are population pressure, open grazing activities, lack of professional natural resource managements, weak governmental regulations on forest resources, effect of climate change, and increasing of unemployment. Thus, it is recommended that strategies should be designed for the pastoralists sector due to decreasing trends of forest and grassland in the basin.