Analysis of Land Cover Change of Dedo District, Jimma Zone, Oromia Regional Government, South Western Ethiopia

In world level, land use has changed considerably in the last ten years – this was due to alarming rate of growth in human population and their requirement for basic human needs starting from food. The developing world accounts for about 95% of the population growth with Africa as the world’s fastest growing region. Land cover is the physical material at the surface of the earth. Land covers include grass, asphalt, trees, bare ground, water, etc. There are two primary methods for capturing information on land cover: field survey and analysis of remotely sensed imagery. Mapping land use/land cover (LULC) and change detection using remote sensing and GIS techniques is an area of interest that has been attracting increasing attention and this is the method that enabled us to analysis Dedo district land cover change. Land use or land cover-change is critically linked to the intersection of natural and human influences on environment change. The changes in state of biosphere and bio-chemical cycles are driven by heterogonous change in land use and continuation of those uses. The land cover assesssment of Dedo district was tried to analyized between different time reference. In this case we tried to analyzed the land cover change detection by taking four time reference 1987, 1995, 2000 and 2015. The land cover change detection was done by using Remote sensing and ArcGIS technology. As thr result of analysis indicated, the vegetation or forest cover of the Dedo district was minimized from year to year. Therefore, it is good to strongly apply integrated soil and watere conservation mechanism in study district.