Author(s)

Yaw A. Twumasi^1*, Edmund C. Merem², John B. Namwamba¹, Olipa S. Mwakimi³, Tomas Ayala-Silva⁴, Kamran Abdollahi¹, Ronald Okwemba¹, Onyumbe E. Ben Lukongo⁵, Caroline O. Akinrinwoye¹, Joshua Tate¹, Kellyn LaCour-Conant¹

¹Department of Urban Forestry and Natural Resources, Southern University and A & M College, 102 Fisher Hall, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA.
²Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Jackson State University, 101 Capitol Center, Jackson, Mississippi, USA.
³Institute of Resource Assessment, University of Dares Salam, Dares Salam, Tanzania.
⁴USDA-ARS Tropical Agriculture Research Station, Suite 201, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico.
⁵Department of Public Policy, Southern University and A & M College, Nelson Mandela College of Government and Social Sciences, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA.

The study aimed to assess the potential of using Remote Sensing (RS) da-ta to evaluate the changes of urban green spaces in Lagos, Nigeria. Land-sat Thematic Mapper and Landsat 8 (Operational Land Imager) data pair of May 4, 1986, December 12, 2002 and January 1, 2019 covering Lagos Government Authority (LGA) were used for this study. Supervised image classification technique using Maximum Likelihood Classifier (MLC) was used to create base map which was then used for ground truthing. Ran-dom Forest (RF) classification technique using RF classifier was utilized in this study to generate the final land use land cover map. RF is an en-semble learning method for classification that operates by constructing a multitude of decision trees at training time and outputting the class that is the mode of the classes (classification). Lagos census population data was also used in this study to model population projection. Extrapolation of the model was used to predict data for the years, 2020 and 2040. Re-sults of the study revealed a reduction of urban green spaces due to agri-culture and settlement. While the remote mapping revealed the gradual dispersion of ecosystem degradation indicators spread across the state, there exists clusters of areas vulnerable to environmental hazards across Lagos. To mitigate these risks, the paper offered recommendations rang-ing from the need for effective policy to green planning education for city managers, developers and risk assessment. These measures will go a long way in helping sustainability and management of land resources in Lagos.

Remote Sensing, Urban Green Spaces, Population Projection, Lagos

Twumasi, Y. , Merem, E. , Namwamba, J. , Mwakimi, O. , Ayala-Silva, T. , Abdollahi, K. , Okwemba, R. , Lukongo, O. , Akinrinwoye, C. , Tate, J. and LaCour-Conant, K. (2020) Degradation of Urban Green Spaces in Lagos, Nigeria: Evidence from Satellite and Demographic Data. Advances in Remote Sensing, 9, 33-52. doi: 10.4236/ars.2020.91003.