Assessment of land use and land cover change on Gum Talha (Acacia seyal var. seyal) forest in Bahar Alarab, Sudan

Abstract

Evaluating land use and land cover change (LULC) is essential for the sustainable management of natural resources, biodiversity conservation, monitoring of food security, and research related to climate change and ecology. A better assessment of land-use changes is highly needed for further investigation due to increasingly rapid changes in LULC in response to human population growth. The emerging climatic change also has a significant effect on LULC. The objective of this study is to assess land use and land cover in Bahar Alarab, East Darfur State, Sudan, using remote sensing data obtained from satellite images. For assessing the LULC changes, Landsat images of the years 1988, 2002, and 2020 were downloaded and analyzed using QGIS 3.22.1 and ERDAS 2014 software, where supervised classification was applied with GPS point verification, change detection, matrix, and accuracy assessment. The analysis on LULC showed considerable changes during the two study periods, where 2020 had a considerable increase in forest cover in which on that year it occupied 26.44% of the area compared to 2002 and 1988 with 21.27% and 21.45%, respectively. Whereas 2002 the area was covered by a vast herbaceous vegetation (33.41%) compared to 1988 and 2002. Moreover, in 1988, shrubland decreased from 31.95% to 29.06% and 23.67% in 2020 and 2002, respectively. Sparse vegetation covered a considerable area in 2020 (23.61%) compared to 2002 and 1988 (21.65% and 17.71%, respectively). The results highlighted that there was statistically significant correlation between climate factors and LULC. Average temperature was highly positively correlated with sparse vegetation at 98.2%, while rainfall was highly negatively correlated with forest (-96.9%) and sparse vegetation (-88%), and highly positively correlated with herbaceous vegetation (83.5%). This study provides a unique understanding of LULC changes and their implications in management and conservation efforts, as well as a road map for decision makers for sustainable development of LULC in the Bahar Alarab.