No abstract

No abstract

Introduction Slums the places where poor people struggle to make aliving and bring up their families, and the places where about one third of the world's urban population live. (The challenge of slums: global report on human settlements, 2003) The importance of maintaining a healthy and sustainable environment cannot be overemphasized.The UN-HABITAT (2012), defines slum as any specific place, whether a whole city or a neighborhood, more than half of all households lack improved water, improved sanitation, sufficient living area, durable housing, secure tenure or combinations of two. Recently as maintained by Cities Alliance Action Plan (1999), slums are neglected parts of cities where housing and living conditions are appallingly poor. The case study conducted in Chengdu; China defined slums as "shanties in low-lying areas". Slums are home to the poorest of urban populations in Africa. The houses inhabited by slum dwellers are mostly decrepit, overcrowded, in neighborhoods that are prone to flooding &beset with poor sanitation & shortage of portage water (Emma-Ochu, et al., 2016).They are areas which little government attention in terms of provision or maintenance of public facilities and infrastructure is being felt. These are high-density squalid central city tenements to spontaneous squatter settlement without legal recognition which sprawl at the edge of cities. Currently, about 1 billion people live in slums, with most slum dwellers located in less developed countries, which accounts for about 30% of their urban population. The number of slum dwellers is projected to increase to 2 billion by 2030 and to 3 billion by 2050 if current trends persist (UN-Habitat, 2010; United Nations, 2015a), as cited by Mahabir,et al.,(2016).Available data reveal that the population of Nigeria has been increasing at an alarming rate. Our towns and cities are growing rapidly. The current urbanization rate of Nigeria is 5.5 percent per annum and the urban population was put at 50 percent in 2012 (Pepple, 2012a) as cited by Mallo, et al., (2015).The slum situation in Nigeria is already frightening for the reason that the proportion of people affected by slum conditions is such a significant element in sub-Sahara Africa. In 2012, the estimated population of 47 sub-Sahara African countries was 910.4million and of this, 167million were Nigerians. Of the 167million people in Nigeria, 61.1 percent were said to reside in slums (

Introduction Gully erosion has been recognized as the major cause of land degradation worldwide (Musa, Ahmed, Muhammed and Abdul, 2016) as cited by Igwe, et al., (2018). Gullies are a highly visible form of soil erosion, with steep-sided, incised, drainage lines greater than 30 cm deep. Gully erosion is both a natural and a human-induced process. Natural gully erosion plays a major role in landscape evolution. Gullies, and the streams that they feed into, help carve out valleys and supply alluvial sediment to fill floodplains (Soil conservation guidelines for Queensland, 2015). According to Igwe, et al., (2018), in most instances, the development of gullies is caused by overgrazing, road construction and urbanization, log haulage, improper farming and irrigation practices. Gully erosion is important because it affects soil productivity, restricts land use, degrades cultural sites and potable water supplies, and can threaten infrastructure such as roads, fences, access and buildings. As gullies have adirect connection to streams, they have a major impact on water quality. Eroded soil ends up in waterways, road culverts, dams, reservoirs, creeks, rivers and marine environments (Soil conservation guidelines for Queensland, 2015). Landscape is the art of designing, planning and management of land, arrangement of natural and man-made elements there on, through application of cultural and scientific knowledge with concern for resources conservation so that the resultant environment can serve a useful, healthy and enjoyable purpose(Adekunle, et al., 2016).They further asserted that landscape is one of the most cost effective tools for improving and sustaining the quality of the environment whether in the school environment, the city, the suburbs or the country. Landscaping is an integral part of our culture and plays an essential role in the quality of our environment, economic wellbeing of the people, as well as their physical and psychological health. Igwe, et al., (2018), posits that landscape as an essential part of the environment which includes topography, vegetation and associated plants and soil, water bodies, is one of the most visual needs of people. An effective landscape is enjoyed by everyone, from residential areas to urban parks. The functionality, the beauty and compatibility with the natural environment are the result of the combined efforts of the landscape designer, the landscape architect and the architect to give an aesthetically pleasing environment (Ayeni, 2012). According to Dung-Gwom, (2007), the colonial policy of spatial and social segregation laid the foundations to the problems of urban planning and slums development in Jos. The native areas were allowed to grow without formal