Assessment of Urban Sprawl, Land Use and Land Cover Changes in Voi Town, Kenya Using Remote Sensing and Landscape Metrics

Abstract


 Rapid and uncontrolled urbanization is a major issue in both developing and developed countries. Uncontrolled urbanization has resulted to unplanned expansion of residential and commercial areas, informal settlements, housing shortages, and unplanned land use. Understanding and quantifying urban sprawl spatiotemporal patterns is critical for informing the development of appropriate policies for effective and sustainable land use management. Using image classification and spatial metrics, this study examines the changes in Voi town's urban land use/land cover (LULC) between 1999 and 2019. The LULC was mapped using Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM):Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+):and Landsat Operational Land Imager (OLI) datasets using supervised maximum likelihood classification. A post classification approach was used to detect and assess LULC changes in the study area, while selected spatial metric indices quantified urban sprawl. The results of the change detection analysis revealed that Voi town has been rapidly expanding, with an urban expansion of 187.96 percent from 1999 to 2011, 183.40 percent from 2011 to 2019, and 716.1 percent from 1999 to 2019. In 1999, the built-up area comprised 1.29 percent of the total study area, 3.72 percent in 2011, and 10.53 percent in 2019. Based on spatial metrics analysis, the number of built-up area patches in 1999, 2011, and 2019 was 154, 278, and 526, respectively. An increase in the number of patches indicated fragmentation and the emergence of new built-up areas. 
 As a result, city planners will need to plan ahead of time and implement additional measures to deal with the city's future rapid and unprecedented growth.
 

Roost selection by synanthropic bats in rural Kenya: implications for human–wildlife conflict and zoonotic pathogen spillover

“…However, an ongoing drought has reduced the rains since 2019 [ 33 ]. Urbanization has dramatically increased over recent decades in Taita-Taveta County, with over 95% of original forest cover cleared and a 700% increase in development landcover [ 34 , 35 ]. Bat diversity is high here, with over 30 species recorded in the county [ 36 ] and humans often have bats living in their buildings (electronic supplementary material, figure S2).…”

Frequent and intense human-bat interactions occur in buildings of rural Kenya

“…The most recent population estimate of Taita-Taveta County was 340,671 people in 2019 [33], with a 1.8% annual increase in population size over the preceding 10 years. Almost three-quarters of the population is considered rural, although urbanization and deforestation are increasing substantially in the region [34][35]. This area is characterized by remnant patches of high-elevation cloud forest surrounded by low-elevation grasslands, woodlands, and agriculture [36].…”

Assessing Human Settlement Sprawl in Mexico via Remote Sensing and Deep Learning

“…Some researchers [36]- [38] employ land-use change alone to indicate settlement sprawl, while others [39] focus on changes occurring radially from the settlement center. In addition to remote sensing, some researchers [40]- [42] have incorporated census information [43]- [45]. However, defining human settlements sprawl in terms of a single indicator may not capture the full complexity of the phenomenon.…”