Spatiotemporal Characteristics of Wetlands Ecosystem in the Niger Delta Region

Abstract

Wetlands are classified as essential and valuable components of the ecosys-tem. Wetlands are significant for ecosystem services such as nutrient cycles, soil formation and water treatment. Nearly half of the world’s wetlands have vanished in the last century because of anthropogenic activities, agricultural land use, and urban development, one of such places that are faced with the challenges of sustainability is the wetland habitats. This study aimed at as-sessing the spatiotemporal characteristics of wetlands ecosystem in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria from 1986-2016. The secondary data include raw sa-tellite imageries obtained from the archive of the United States Geological Survey and Earth Explorer. The data set includes a notable period of four years landsat images for, 1986, 1996, 2006 and 2016. The maps were projected using Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) projection system and datum WGS 84 of zone 32. Satellite images of the study area were acquired from the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The USGS uses the LandSat5 The-matic Mapper (TM) Landsat7 Thematic Mapper, Enhanced Thematic Map-per (ETM+), Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) and Landsa8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) to generate high resolution images that are useful for this type of study. The satellite imageries were also analyzed using GIS and Remote Sensing techniques by computing of Normalized Differential Vegetation In-dex (NDVI) values for the entire study area by conversion of spectral reflec-tance values into NDVI values. The satellite images covering the area were acquired and analyzed using ArcGIS10.6. A total area of 25,053.93 (km2) was delineated in the study area. After processing the imagery, five land use/land cover (LULC) classes were developed in ArcGIS environment, such as Built-up area, Fallow land, Vegetation, Wetland and Waterbody. This study concludes that changes in wetland landscape patterns will produce profound impacts in urban areas where there are rapid anthropogenic activities. Anova table showed a huge significant relationship between time and vegetation de-crease across the study area at 0.027 which is less than 0.05 significance level. Wetlands warming and drying will cause the shrinking and reduction of wet-land in sizes from accelerated wetland degradation. Therefore, there is an in-teraction and mutual influence between dynamic changes of wetland land-scape patterns and other land use classes.