A Review on Land Use and Land Cover Change in Ethiopian Basins

Abstract

Land Use Land Cover (LULC) changes analysis is one of the most useful methodologies to understand how the land was used in the past years, what types of detections are to be expected in the future, as well as the driving forces and processes behind these changes. In Ethiopia, the rapidly changing of LULC is mainly due to population pressure, resettlement programs, climate change, and other human and nature-induced driving forces. Anthropogenic activities are the most significant factors adversely changing the natural status of the landscape and resources, which exerts unfavourable and adverse impacts on the environment and livelihood. The main goal of the present work is to review previous studies, discussing the spatio-temporal LULC changes in Ethiopian basins, to find out common points and gaps that exist in the current literature, to be eventually addressed in the future. Seventeen articles, published from 2011 to 2020, were selected and reviewed, focusing on LULC classification using ArcGIS and ERDAS imagine software by unsupervised and maximum likelihood supervised classification methods. Key informant interview (KII), focal group discussions (FGDs) and collection of ground truth data using ground positioning systems (GPS) for data validation were the major approaches discussed in most of the studies. All the analysed research showed that, during the last decades, Ethiopian lands changed to agricultural land use, waterbody, commercial farmland and built-up/settlement. Some parts of forest land, grazing land, swamp/wetland, shrubland, rangeland and bare/ rock out cropland cover class were changed to other LULC class types, mainly as a consequence of increasing anthropogenic pressure. In summary, these articles confirmed that LULC changes are a direct result of both natural and human influences. However, most of the study provided details of LULC for the past decades within a specific spatial location, while they did not address the challenge of forecasting future LULC changes at the basin scale.

Spatiotemporal land use and cover changes across agroecologies and slope gradients using geospatial technologies in Zoa watershed, Southwest Ethiopia

“…Moreover, Abera et al., 2020 ) affirmed that population density and rapid population growth exacerbate the rate of resource depletion in the Chewaka district of Ethiopia. Regasa et al. (2021) based on the a literature review underlined unfavorable changes in LULC as a consequence of increasing human pressure on the Ethiopian environment driven by the need of improving the socioeconomic situation of the local population.…”

“…LULC changes are a direct outcome of both human and natural factors, with anthropogenic pressure owing to globalization as the foremost driver ( Regasa et al., 2021 ). Such an opinion concerning various parts of Ethiopia is also presented by other authors, emphasizing the common and simultaneous effect of the interaction of natural and anthropogenic driving factors ( Betru et al., 2019 ; Degife et al., 2019 ; Aneseyee et al., 2020 ; Dibaba et al., 2020 ; Sisay et al., 2021 ).…”

“…LULC refers to both due to natural and anthropogenic changes to land resources ( Jacob et al., 2015 ; Kidane et al., 2019 ; Tolessa et al., 2020 ). According to Regasa et al. (2021) , LULC analysis is amongst the most typically used techniques for determining how the land has been utilized in the previous time, what varieties of investigations are expected to be conducted in the future, and the causes and processes that are driving these changes.…”

“…Ethiopia has experienced very rapid LULC changes due to human-induced drivers like resettlement programs and population pressure as well as natural-induced driving forces like the variability of climate change, slope inclinations and agroecological categories ( Regasa et al., 2021 ). LULC change associated with land degradation processes is currently increasing at an alarming rate, contributing a significantly large amounts of soil loss.…”

Historical and future land use and land cover changes in the Fincha watershed, Ethiopia

“…Land use is de ned as how the land is utilized by human beings and their habitats, usually with an accent on a practical role of land for economic activities, whereas land cover is a physical characteristic of the Earth's surface or attributes of a part of the Earth's land surface and immediate subsurface, including biota, soil, topography, surface and groundwater, and human structures (Alan et al 2020;Leta et al 2021a;Regasa et al 2021;Tadese et al 2021). As it strictly connected with representing the hydrological cycle (Dwivedi et al 2005), land use and land cover (LULC) change has been one of the most widely used methods to comprehend past land uses, types of changes estimated, the forces behind such changes and the perceptible transformations of the Earth's surface (Alam et al 2020).…”