Landscape Mapping to Quantify Degree-of-Freedom, Degree-of-Sprawl, and Degree-of-Goodness of Urban Growth in Hawassa, Ethiopia

Abstract

In the rapidly urbanizing African continent, monitoring, mapping and modeling of urban growth is an indispensable task to understand the magnitude and rate of the ongoing changes. Remote sensing data have been found useful in mapping urban areas and as a source of data for modeling and analysis of spatio-temporal trajectories of cities. In this study, remote sensing data from different sensors extending over a period of 24 years (1987-2011) were used to classify and extract areas of the established land use land cover classes in Hawassa City, Ethiopia. Among those classes, built-up areas were used to quantify urban growth and sprawl. The result of the mapping indicated that the built-up area had increased by 234.5% between 1987 and 2011. The area under investigation was subdivided into eight equal zones within a circle to apply analytical models. To analyze the pattern, process and overall growth status of Hawassa City, Pearson's Chi-square statistics, Shannon's entropy, and degree-of-goodness models were employed. The result revealed that the degree-of-freedom was high indicating the disparity between observed and expected urban growth. The entropy values both in temporal intervals and zones were found higher than halfway mark of respectively showing the tendency of sprawl. Except the South Zone, the city had not experienced "goodness" during the entire study period. This study has provided new evidence about the urban growth in the study area that could be used by city managers.

Urbanization in Small Cities and Their Significant Implications on Landscape Structures: The Case in Ethiopia

“…Other towns have shared a common boundary with a capital city, and they showed a tendency to expand towards Addis Ababa, following the main road, suggesting a lack of rigorous implementation of the master plan. The outcome from prior studies [10,18,37,38,46] indicated that rapid urbanization and lack of good monitoring and managing urban development, lead to a shift in the natural ecosystem of the area and the formation of a more fragmented landscape pattern. In this study, ecological service can be deteriorated due to the considerable decrease in the grassland, agriculture, and vegetation ecosystem (Table 8).…”

“…For instance, Mekelle and Hawassa, are the third and fourth-largest cities, respectively, of the country. These cites lost 20.8% [19] and 48.5% [46] of vegetation cover between the years 1984 to 2014. However, this value was higher in this study.…”

“…Since the past couple of decades, regional cities in Ethiopia have grown faster than the capital city, Addis Ababa [43]. This feature can likely be explained considering the national economic development [44] and urban improvement policies [45] that fostered the rapid urban expansion in secondary and tertiary cities.Some studies have explored urban expansion in Ethiopia [15,19,42,46,47], primarily focusing on the analysis of urban growth and urban land changes in the regional or capital cities. However, the literature on the trend of urban spatial growth and its influences on other natural landscape configurations is quite limited with regards to small cities and towns.…”

“…Some studies have explored urban expansion in Ethiopia [15,19,42,46,47], primarily focusing on the analysis of urban growth and urban land changes in the regional or capital cities. However, the literature on the trend of urban spatial growth and its influences on other natural landscape configurations is quite limited with regards to small cities and towns.…”

Functionality of the Land Certification Program in Ethiopia: Exploratory Evaluation of the Processes of Updating Certificates

“…We have identified four areas where we believe additional research is required: (1) understanding the extent and barriers of non-functional systems in all regional states using the land certification system, (2) assessing the causes of non-functionality and feasible options for improvement, (3) how to handle the rise of land that is uninheritable due to its small size, and (4) assessing rural livelihoods in the context of limited land and a growing population. The challenges of peri-urban areas are also of significant importance; however, there is relatively more evidence and on-going research on issues related to this [27][28][29][30][31]. We discuss the four potential research directions in more detail in the following.…”