A Study of Alkaleri Forest Land Cover Changes using Satellite Remote Sensing in Bauchi State

Abstract

Remote sensing and GIS tool has been used all over the Nigeria for Land cover and Land use mapping for the past few decades. Related tools and techniques have been used in this research for Land use mapping in Alkalari Local Government Area, Bauchi State. Supervised classification, which is one of the beneficial techniques of remote sensing, is used for three decades study. In this study three different Landsat images, comprising of temporal window of about three decade, along with survey points, has been used for accurate land use estimation. The study focused on change detection of four major land use consisting on Vegetation, Built-up area lands, Bare land the classified land cover data showed an overall depletion of forest cover when compared the results from 1990 to 2013. The conclusion derive from this study is that rate of deforestation is on the increase in Alkalari Local Government Area which is deeply affected due to anthropogenic activities. Reduction in forest is a main loss in ecosystem which also increases the possibility of drought occurrence in the study area. The result shows that a lot of vegetation was converted to a bare land as a result of farm clearing and fuel wood exploitation in the study area. Finally, recommendations were offered in order to manage the available land cover resources available in the study area.

Key words: Forest, Land cover, Alkaleri, Geographic Information System, Remote Sensing, Landsat Satellite Imagery