Geospatial Analysis of Landuse and Landcover Dynamics In Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria

Remote Sensing and GIS techniques was used to analyse the landuse and landcover dynamics of Ado-Ekiti LGA, the Ekiti State capital, for a period of twenty nine years (29yrs) in this study. Multi-temporal and multi-source satellite imageries of Landsat 1986, 1991, 2002 and 2015 were used. The study employed supervised digital image classification method using ENVI 5.3 software and five landuse and landcover types which include settlement, bare surface, cultivation, forest and water body were detected and captured as polygon. The area in square kilometers of each land use type in each year was calculated and thereafter the change was determined by subtracting the area of the same land use type in 1986 from 2015, the percentage and magnitude of change are therefore calculated. The results obtained shows that the settlement has increased by 47km2 (79%) while cultivation, forest and water body reduced by 45.53km2 (9.98%), 61.7km2 (13.79%) and 0.03Km2 (6.5%) between 1986 and 2015. The statistics also reveals that substantial land use/land cover changes have taken place and that the settlement and baresurface areas have continued to expand over the study period while the forest and farmland have decreased. The study also notes that the expansion of the urban settlement areas has resulted into reduction of the land under agriculture and other natural vegetation, thereby affecting the natural ecosystems habitat quality, which has consequently led to environmental degradation.