Land use—land cover change and soil-gully erosion relationships: A study of nanka, south-eastern nigeria using geoinformatics

Abstract

This study aimed at identifying the land use-land cover (LULC) types and their changes by mapping the soil erodibility intensity, and estimating the LULC change caused by soil-gully erosion in Nanka region using geoinformatics tools. Data covering 1991, 2003 and 2015 were acquired from the Global Land Cover Facility (GLCF)-an Earth Science Data Interface, and from the National Space Research and Development Agency, Abuja (NASRDA). In addition, land use-land cover (LULC) data of Nanka and its environs were generated from the local government boundary map and Nigerian Administrative map at 1: 50,000 topographic scale. ENVI (version 4.7), ArcGIS 10.1, the RUSLE model and sta-tistica software packages were used to process and analyse the data. The results revealed that areas with steep slopes have high and severe erosion levels except for Isuofia community which is on steep slope yet, has slight erosion because of the prevalence of dense forest vegetation cover. Integration of Remote Sensing, GIS and the RUSLE model has shown technical benefit, cost-effectiveness with reliable result and should be applied in the future assessment of erosion in Nigeria and other African countries.