Analysis of urban expansion and land cover changes in Lagos Metropolis, Nigeria

Abstract

Nigeria in recent times has been experiencing uncontrolled urban expansion which poses significant threat to physical planning, socio-economic development, health risk and sustainable metropolitan management. There is dearth in literature and empirical studies in analyzing urban expansion and land cover changes in Lagos metropolis. The paper seeks to examine the nature and trend of urban expansion from 19995, 2000 and 2015 in Kosofe Local Government Area (LGA) of Lagos Metropolis. The study uses Landsat imageries for 1995, 2000 and 2015 collected from United State Geological Survey (USGS) for analyzing the land use and land cover in the study area. The Landsat images were classified using supervised classification. Results reveal that between year 1995 and 2000, the land use land cover shows that there is less than 20% built up areas and more than 70% significant change in the land use land cover for bare ground, vegetation and water body respectively. In contrast, in the year 2015, there was more than 40% increase in built up areas and less than 60% bare ground, vegetation and water body respectively. At the aggregate level, there was more than 20% increase in built up areas between 1995, 2000 and 2015 and 8% decreased in bare ground between 1995, 2000 and 2015. I recommend effective physical planning measures in addressing the uncontrolled urban expansion in the study area.