Forest is a fundamental, significant, and valuable component of a sustainable environment. Ecosystem services, biodiversity development, and economic growth in any nation depend on the proficient use of forests and their resources. However, deforestation has remained the single most important environmental phenomenon threatening the existence of the forest environment in Nigeria. This study was carried out to assess the exploitation of forestland in the central zone of Taraba state using GIS and remote sensing techniques. The satellite imageries used are Lands at imageries of 2006, 2012, and 2018. Ground Control points (GCPs) were obtained from Google earth to validate the coordinates of the classified imageries. The result obtained from 2006 classification showed that thick forest occupied the total of 1685448.99 ha equivalent to 80.38% and was the highest land cover suffering a decline in the area amounting to 694696 ha which equals to 33.13% in 2018. The pattern of land cover changes at the early stage was restricted to dissection and perforation in 2006. A remarkable expansion of bare land patches accompanied by total attrition of thick forest was identified due North in Bali local government area as compared to Gashaka and Kurmi local governments that have fragmented and little shrinking pattern of changes from 6.87% in 2006 to 37.65% in 2018. This shows that; as bare land increases, thick forests keep on decreasing within thirteen (13) years. It was recommended that increased reforestation efforts, sensitization and periodical campaigns against deforestation, and redesign of the existing forestry laws by the state government to curtail incessant incidents of deforestation in the study area be undertaken.

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This study examined the integration of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System (RS/GIS) for analyzing land use in Jalingo Region, Taraba State for the period 1996 to 2016; the image of 1996, 2006 and 2016 was used. The study employed a supervised digital image classification method using Arc GIS 10.3 software and classified the land use into residential, agricultural, commercial and transport. The images were made to pass through the processes of georeferencing, image enhancement, image resampling and classification and also descriptive statistics was adopted to analyze the findings on the effect of Urbanization on agricultural land use. Data for the study was the image of Jalingo Region of 1996, 2006 and 2016; also data was collected primarily by the administration of the questionnaire, and a total of 289 well-structured questionnaires were administered. Result show there was a significant loss of agricultural land from 180.46 km2 to 135.66 km2. It also revealed an increase of residential land use from 10.30% area coverage in 1996 to 28.07% in 2016, commercial land use increased from 0.20% area coverage in 1996 to 2.60% and transport increased from 0.39% to 2.84% in the same study period, with an annual rate of change of 7.82%, 35.81% and  46.95% respectively. This study shows that agricultural land use pattern has been greatly affected by transport, residential and commercial land uses. These results could help city planners and policymakers to attain and sustain future urban development. It is therefore recommended that government should encourage the people to expand and build towards the outskirts of cities, like Joroyinu, Lankaviri, etc through the provision of incentives and forces of attraction that is available at the city center in these areas to avoid the problem of overcrowdings.

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