Assessing the Pattern of Land Use and Land Cover Changes and its Implication on Surface Water in Kaduna State, Nigeria

Abstract

Over the years, Kaduna State has witnessed tremendous increase in population and urbanization that have changed the landscape of the area. The paper assesses the pattern of land use and land cover (LULC) changes in Kaduna State, and made hydrological inferences. The Landsat imageries were acquired from United States Geological Survey (USGS) satellite image database for the period of1984, 1994, 2004, 2014 and 2019. Supervised image classification using the maximum like-hood Algorithm in ArcGIS was adopted to classify the LULC of Kaduna State into six classes. There was about 60% increase in farmland, 7% in built-up area and 0.38% in water body between 1984 to 2019. The most significant decrease in LULC occurred in vegetation (21%) and Rock outcrop (10.62%) during this period. The predicted future LULC change suggests that only about 19.56% of the State will remain under vegetation cover by the year 2030. The results underscored the increasing anthropogenic activities in Kaduna State that influenced recharge rate, surface run-off, infiltration and incidences of soil erosion in the study area. The paper strongly suggests that the main solution to deforestation and unguided urbanization has to start from local action, a bottom-up approach between the responsible authorities and local people to work together in partnership to check deforestation and plan urban development. Planting of the loss native trees and protection of existing vegetation from fire and land clearing should also be encouraged, as well as the restoration of degraded lands and stabilization of ecosystem for combating climate variability or change