Modeling the Impact of Urbanization on Land-Use Change in Bahir Dar City, Ethiopia: An Integrated Cellular Automata–Markov Chain Approach

Abstract

The fast-paced urbanization of recent decades entails that many regions are facing seemingly uncontrolled land-use changes (LUCs) that go hand in hand with a range of environmental and socio-economic challenges. In this paper, we use an integrated cellular automata–Markov chain (CA–MC) model to analyze and predict the urban expansion of and its impact on LUC in the city of Bahir Dar, Ethiopia. To this end, the research marshals high-resolution Landsat images of 1991, 2002, 2011, and 2018. An analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method is then used to identify the biophysical and socioeconomic factors underlying the expansion in the research area. It is shown that, during the period of study, built-up areas are rapidly expanding in the face of an overall decline of the farmland and vegetation cover. Drawing on a model calibration for 2018, the research predicts the possible geographies of LUC in the Bahir Dar area for 2025, 2034, and 2045. It is predicted that the conversions of other land-use types into built-up areas will persist in the southern, southwestern, and northeastern areas of the sprawling city, which can mainly be traced back to the uneven geographies of road accessibility, proximity to the city center, and slope variables. We reflect on how our findings can be used to facilitate sustainable urban development and land-use policies in the Bahir Dar area.

The impacts of land-use and land-cover change on wetland ecosystem service values in peri-urban and urban area of Bahir Dar City, Upper Blue Nile Basin, Northwestern Ethiopia

“…Evidence from remote sensing image analysis showed a continuous decline of wetland areas including water bodies in the past 35 years in the study area. The pronounced expansion of the built-up area to the peripheral areas of the same study area was also reported by Fitawok et al (2020). Nevertheless, the findings of Fitawok et al (2020) did not clearly show the extent of wetland conversions to urban areas due to the problem created during LULC classification.…”

“…The wetland ecosystem services that are threatened by city expansion were not addressed and the values of ecosystem services were not quantified. Two other studies (Haregeweyn et al 2012;Fitawok et al 2020) were also conducted on the LULC of Bahir Dar City and the underlining factors for its LULC dynamics. But, the impact of LULC on ecosystem services and ecosystem services values lost or gained by LULC were not the focus of these studies.…”

Impact of landscapes Dynamics and Intensity on Ecological Land in Major Ethiopia Cities

“…Built up development, the most outstanding incident, is most related with large-scale deterioration in urban agricultural land. This is maybe happening as the result of secondary land use dynamics and shows a dissimilar trend in that, most studies reported built-up upsurge as expense of urban forest ecosystem (Azagew and Worku, 2020;Fitawok et al, 2020;Gashu and Gebre-Egziabher, 2018;Kinfu et al, 2019;Larsen et al, 2019;Zou and Wang, 2021). Moreover, the lost rate of urban forest and greenery was also high, mainly in ecosystems which are found as fragmented in around urban agricultural ecosystem and border area of the cities.…”

Uncovering Ecosystem Services of Expropriated Land: The Case of Urban Expansion in Bahir Dar, Northwest Ethiopia

“…The total area of Bahir Dar was 279 ha in 1957 [54] and increased to 5579 ha in 2015 in which 2739.6 ha was a built up area [55]. The built up area is also projected to be 5276 ha in 2045 [56] Second, the rapid growth in demography and area has resulted into a large number of land expropriation cases each year because the demand for urban land is mainly met by compulsorily acquiring land from the rural kebeles. Bahir Dar has annually incorporated, on average, 150 ha of agricultural land from the surrounding kebeles through expropriations between 2007-2017 [23].…”