Assessing Land-Cover Transformation and Seasonal High-Wind Exposure in the Context of Climate Change in Bauchi, Nigeria: A Multi-Source Geospatial Analysis

Reliable local evidence on wind-related hazards remains limited in many rapidly changing West African landscapes. This study assessed seasonal high-wind exposure, land-cover transformation and hydroclimatic variability in Bauchi Local Government Area, Nigeria, using a multi-source geospatial design. Monthly NASA POWER maximum wind speed at 10 m was used to construct a high-wind proxy, defined as the number of months per year with WS10M_MAX ≥ 8.0 m s⠻¹, for 1985–2024. Landsat classifications for 1984, 1994, 2004, 2014 and 2024 quantified land-cover change, while gridded rainfall and temperature series for 2005–2025 described recent hydroclimatic variability. High-wind months were strongly seasonal and concentrated in December–May. The mean annual proxy frequency varied from 4.2 months in 1985–1994 to 5.0 months in 2005–2014 before declining to 4.5 months in 2015–2024; the linear trend was weak and not statistically significant (0.013 months year⠻¹, p = 0.481). In contrast, land-cover change was substantial: forest declined from 531.83 to 154.60 km² (−70.9%), cropland increased from 2641.38 to 2975.25 km² (+12.6%), and built-up land expanded from 33.85 to 72.27 km² (+113.5%). Rainfall was highly variable, including an unusually wet phase in 2020–2022, while the 2005–2025 temperature trend was not significant. The findings show that hazard exposure in Bauchi is shaped less by a simple long-term increase in regional wind speed than by recurrent seasonal high-wind conditions interacting with rapid land-surface transformation. Vegetation protection, climate-sensitive development control and locally validated wind monitoring are therefore central to risk reduction.