Assessment of Land Use and Land Cover Change Using GIS and Remote Sensing: A Case Study of Kieni, Central Kenya

Abstract

To investigate land use land cover changes (LULCC) in the Kieni sub-county in Central Kenya from 1987 to 2017, remote sensing and Geographical Information System (GIS) was used. This was done by downloading and processing landsat images of 1987, 1995, 2000, 2010 and 2017. Methods employed were, data identification and acquisition, image processing, validation and presentation. There were six classifications analysed which were; bare areas, bushlands, farmlands, forest, grasslands and waterbodies. The results showed an increase in the classes of water bodies, farmlands and bare areas by 314.86%, 160.45% and 73.18% respectively over the 30-year period. The results also showed a decrease in the land use land cover classes categories of forest, bushlands and grassland by 45.94%, 38.73% and 29.66% respectively. Therefore, in conclusion, there were land use and land cover changes in the study area over the 30-year period between 1987 and 2017 as illustrated by results that showed that farmlands classification increased by more than one and half times while forest cover was reduced by about a half.