Mapping Flood Vulnerability arising from Land use/Land covers Change along River Kaduna, Kaduna State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study attempted to assess the spatial impact of river Kaduna flooding of Kaduna South LGA on the surrounding areas using High Resolution Satellite Imagery. A Digital Elevation Model (DEM) was developed with Arc. GIS.10 version to identify flood prone areas along the middle course of the river. A flow accumulation model was created using the DEM and was reclassified into very high risk, high risk, moderate risk, low risk and very low risk zones using equal interval of separation based on elevation. This was overlaid on the map of the settlement extracted from land use/land cover classification of 1990, 2006 and 2010 landsat ETM+ images using ENVI version 4.7 to produce a vulnerability map of the area. The result of the analysis shows that about 30% equivalent to 17.76km2 of 59.03km2 is at very high risk to flood and the remaining 70% is either moderate or at low risk. It was shown that a flood map can be effectively used in public enlightenment, disaster response planning and flood risk management. This study demonstrated the contribution of geospatial methods in mitigating and monitoring the effects of flooding along river Kaduna and environs. Keywords: