TITLE:
Land Use Land Cover Dynamics of Upper Benue River Basin, Nigeria
AUTHORS:
Ma’aku Mark Joshua, E. D. Oruonye, A. A. Zemba, M. B. Yusuf
KEYWORDS:
Anthropogenic, Drainage Basin, Land Use Change, Landsat Imageries & River Benue
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection,
Vol.11 No.3,
March
27,
2023
ABSTRACT: This study examined land use land cover (LULC) dynamics in Upper Benue
River Basin, Nigeria. The study makes use of primary and secondary data.
Landsat Imageries for the years 1981, 2001 and 2021 were used in the study.
Supervised approach with maximum likelihood classifier was adopted for the
classification and generation of LULC maps. Markov Cellular Automata model was used to predict the status of LULC of the catchment for year 2070. The
findings of the study reveal remarkable changes in the land use land cover of the Upper Benue
River Basin. The land cover has witnessed downward trend in the percentage area
covered by vegetation and bare surface resulting in 15.4% and 2.6% losses respectively.
The result of the findings reveals that the built-up area and rock outcrop has
shown significant gains of 15.2% and 2.9% of the study area respectively. Water
body has been stable with 0% change, though, it witnessed a marginal decline in
2001. The land use land cover change observed in the Upper Benue River Basin
was as a result of anthropogenic factors characterized by deforestation,
expansion of agricultural lands, overgrazing among others. Based on the
findings, the study recommended controlled
grazing activity, deforestation and indiscriminate fuelwood exploitation
and improved agronomic practices in the basin.