URBAN EXPANSION AND ITS IMPACTS ON PERIPHERAL FARMING COMMUNITIES IN THE CASE OF SODO TOWN, WOLAYITA ZONE SNNPR, ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Urban expansion is a universal phenomenon taking place all around the globe which involve both vertical and horizontal expansion of the physical structure of urban areas. The main objective of this study was used to investigate urban expansion and its socio-economic impacts on peripheral farming communities in Sodo town. This study employed primary and secondary sources of data in order to achieve the stated objectives. GIS and remote sensing were used to analyze the phenomena of agricultural land transformation into urban land use. The descriptive research methods was employed and 327 systematically selected sample households from three peripheral kebeles. SPSS software were used to analyze socioeconomic data. The change detection method has been applied to investigate LULCC by using ERDAS IMAGINE 2015. The Maximum Likelihood Algorithm of Supervised Classification has been used to generate land use/land cover maps. The satellite image results show that built up areas increased by 285.93ha, 252.27ha and 457.47ha respectively in the first, the second and the entire study periods. While bare land, forest cover and grass land have shown an observable decrease over the past 30 years, but agricultural land increased from 8601ha in 1989 to 9235ha in 2019. Sodo Town is expanding to peripheral keeeles in all direction that is basically driven by demographic and government induced factors. The expansion of the town have both positive and negative impacts on peripheral farming communities. Positively, the expansion program created job opportunities and better access to social services than before. Loss of agricultural land, displacement of farmers from their original residence and social disorder are the major negative impacts of urban expansion on peripheral agricultural community those were driven by government policy, natural increase and migration.