Quantification of land use/land cover dynamics and urban growth in rapidly urbanized countries: The case Hawassa city, Ethiopia

Abstract

Land Use and Land Cover Changes (LULC) are some of the worldwide factors that have the most impact on city growth. The aim of this study could be a quantification of the land use/land cover dynamic over three decades in Hawassa City, Ethiopia. This study used multi-spectral satellite images of the years 1990 and 2020. The six category classifications within the study area were agriculture, bare land, built-up, bushland, forest, and water body. The data for the study was acquired from a satellite image of Landsat 5TM 1990, 2000, and 2010 and Landsat 8 OLI and SWIR 2020. Packages like QGIS version 3.2, ArcGIS 10.3, ENVI 4.2, and ERDAS Imagine 2013 were accustomed to performing image classification. From this finding, it is clear that the study space is underneath serious land use conversion of bare land to built-up space and bush land to agricultural. The general LULCC between the years 1990 and 2020, satellite results show that between 1990 and 2020, the quantify of built-up land increased from 12.76% to 16.85% of the study area as bare land and bush decreased from 4.77% to 2.48% and 14.29% to 10.16%, respectively, from the entire study.