Impact of slum growth on climatic elements in Kuje Urban Area, Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria

Abstract

This study assessed slum growth and its impact on climatic elements in Kuje urban area of Nigeria. Multi-criteria and quantitative research design were adopted in this study. This study adopted the supervised classification method that uses the spectral signatures obtained from training samples to classify an image. With the aid of ground truth, a signature file was created by training samples cells, which was used for the multivariate classification tools to classify the image. The climatic data were subjected to time series analysis, coefficient of determination (R2) was carried out from the trend line equations. One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) Test was used to test variation of climatic elements from the land use/land cover in Kuje urban slum over study period. Between 2012-2022 agricultural land use, bare surfaces and vegetal land cover were loss to urban slums. Bare surface and built up area had the highest temperature values compared to that from vegetal cover and agricultural land uses. Relative humidity is higher on vegetal covered areas and agricultural land used areas and slum growth negatively affects relative humidity in the Kuje slum area. There is less difference in the mean values of surface soil moisture over the land use/land cover but the soil moisture is higher in vegetated area and agricultural land use area but lower at built up slum areas and bare surfaces with a significance rise over study period of 2002 to 2022. ANOVA result shows that earth's surface temperature is not significantly different across the four land uses. It was recommended that slum need to be incorporated into Kuje urban area planning through gentrification of buildings since demolition is not an option due to large concentration of indigenous people within the slum.