Detection and Prediction of Land Cover Changes in Upper Athi River Catchment, Kenya: A Strategy towards Monitoring Environmental Changes

Abstract

The Upper Athi River Catchment is one of the major catchment areas in Kenya which have experienced land cover changes due to changes in land uses and population pressure. The main objective of the study was to determine past spatial and temporal land cover changes and predict future land cover changes in Upper Athi River Catchment as a means of monitoring environmental changes. Landsat TM images of the years 1984, 2000 and 2010 were used to determine spatial and temporal land cover changes in the period 1984-2010 while the Cellular Automat-Markov (CA-Markov) model was used to predict land cover changes between 2010 and 2030 based on 1984-2010 trends. Change detection between 1984 and 2010 revealed that agricultural and built-up lands increased by 8.67% and 23.70%, while closed/open woody vegetation, broadleaved evergreen forest and rangeland decreased by 9.98%, 2.52% and 19.88%, respectively. Between 2010 and 2030, it was predicted that built-up and agricultural lands would increase by 7.66% and 5.61%, while rangeland; closed/open woody vegetation and broadleaved evergreen forest would decrease by 6.42%, 6.62 % and 0.22 %, respectively. The results showed that agricultural expansion and urbanization will be the main causes of land cover and environmental changes within the catchment.

Land Use and Land Cover Change Modeling and Future Potential Landscape Risk Assessment Using Markov-CA Model and Analytical Hierarchy Process

“…Numerous methods, such as mathematical-equation-based, spatiotemporal modeling [69], system dynamic simulation [70], statistical, cellular and hybrid models [71], cellular and agent-based models or a hybrid of the two [72], and the cellular automata-Markov chain (CA-Markov) model [44,[73][74][75][76], have been utilized in different research.…”

Response of Oxidative Stress Variables, Proteins, and Chlorophyll in Three Plant Species Caused by Moderate Soil Pollution with Toxic Elements

“…Many authors have demonstrated that there is a necessity to identify the chemical forms in which the elements exist in soils. These forms can strongly influence their speciation and are used for estimating their bioavailability, their physicochemical reactivity and their mobility into the food chain [34]. In general, mobile forms are more toxic to plant growth than strongly complex forms [35].…”

Predicting land use/cover changes and its association to agricultural production on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania

“…Literature provides a wide range of the methods available for performing model validation; some of these methods are the kappa coefficient and Cramer's V (Baysal 2013). The quantity and allocation disagreements (Brown et al 2013), chisquare, and F-test of the observed and simulated images (Katana, Ucakuwun, and Munyao 2013), as well as the relative operating characteristics (Pontius and Schneider 2001), are among the available validation methods. This study used quantity disagreement and allocation disagreements through the VALIDATE function embedded in IDRISI selva software.…”