Abstract:
Land use land cover change mainly through the conversion of natural vegetation to
agricultural land and settlement land has been the most widely observed activity in
Ethiopia. The objective of this study was to analyze the land use/ land cover change,
driving forces, and its implications for land degradation in the period between 1990 and
2020 in the Yeka sub-watershed of the west Hararghe highlands, Eastern Ethiopia. The
study used multi-date remote sensing data taken for the periods of 1991, 2005, and 2020
from Land Sat Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper7 (ETM+), and
Operational Land Imager (OLI) respectively. The remote sensing of each study period was
preprocessed and classified using the supervised classification approach which is based on
Maximum Likelihood Classifier (MLC) algorithm. The remote sensing data was supported
with primary data collected through a survey questionnaire, FGD, and key informant
interviews. Generally, five land use/land cover types were identified in this study. These
include Bare land Cultivated land, shrubs, forest, and settlement areas. The results
demonstrated that bare lands, cultivated lands, forests, and shrubs constituted the most
extensive type of LULC in the study area. While the smallest lands cover classes were the
settlement areas. According to the results, the study area experienced a significant change
in land use/land cover in the period between 1991 to2020. Generally, the area of forest
cover showed a decreasing trend whereas the area of cultivated lands and settlements
were increasing over the last thirty years (1991 to 2020). Population pressure, increasing
demands for cultivated land, fuel wood, and construction), policy, and institutional are the
major factors attributed to the observed land use and cover change in the study area. The
land use/ land cover change observed in the study area generally has resulted in an
acceleration of soil degradation, a decline in the quality of soil and soil fertility, and an
increase in the loss of biodiversity.
