Assessing the Impacts of Land Use Changes on Vegetation Cover in Eastern Sudan

Select Volume / Issue:

• Volume 4,Issue 2, Mar. 2017

Year:

2017

Type of Publication:

Article

Keywords:

Remote Sensin, Land Use and Land Cover Change, Sudan, Gadarif State

Authors:

Yagoub, Yousif Elnour; Musa, Omer Said; Siddig, Ahmed A. H.; Bo, Zhang; Zhongqin, Li; Feiteng, Wang

Journal:

IJRAS

Volume:

4

Number:

2

Pages:

70-75

Month:

March

ISSN:

2348-3997

Note:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Creative Commons License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Abstract:

This paper an attempt has been made to investigate and monitor the Impact of Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) changes in the eastern part of Sudan (Gadarif state) by using multi-temporal Landsat data for the years 1986, 1994 and 2013. LULC grades in the classification scheme are; Forest, Mechanized Rain-fed Agriculture (MRA), Irrigated land, Rangeland, Settlement and Water. Individual classifications based on maximum likelihood of algorithm is employed. The results showed that a significant extensive change of LULC patterns has occurred during the previous years within the study area. The major trends were drasticed conversions of natural vegetation into large-scale MRA which increased from 1058241.2 ha in 1981 to 2459264.7 ha in 2013. This resulted in a progressive loss and degradation of Rangeland areas in Gadarif state; Rangeland was decreased from 4342154.2 ha in 1986 to 3473940 ha in 2013. Forest area and Rangeland are reduced due to of expansion in modern mechanized farming as a result of increasing human population to satisfy an increasing demand for food.

Full text: IJRAS_505__FINAL.pdf