Drivers of land use/land cover changes in Munessa-Shashemene landscape of the south-central highlands of Ethiopia

Abstract

Understanding drivers of changes in land use/land cover (LULC) is essential for modeling future dynamics or development of management strategies to ameliorate or prevent further decline of natural resources. In this study, an attempt has been made to identify the main drivers behind the LULC changes that had occurred in the past four decades in Munessa-Shashemene landscape of the south-central highlands of Ethiopia. The datasets required for the study were generated through both primary and secondary sources. Combination of techniques, including descriptive statistics, GIS-based processing, and regression analyses were employed for data analyses. Changes triggered by the interplay of more than 12 drivers were identified related to social, economic, environmental, policy/institutional, and technological factors. Specifically, population growth, expansion of cultivated lands and settlements, livestock ranching, cutting of woody species for fuelwood, and charcoal making were the top six important drivers of LULC change as viewed by the local people and confirmed by quantitative analyses. Differences in respondents' perceptions related to environmental (i.e., location specific) and socioeconomic determinants (e.g., age and literacy) about drivers were statically significant (P = 0.001). LULC changes were also determined by distances to major drivers (e.g., the further a pixel is from the road, the less likelihood of changes) as shown by the landscape level analyses. Further studies are suggested targeting these drivers to explore the consequences and future options and formulate intervention strategies for sustainable development in the studied landscape and elsewhere with similar geographic settings.

An insight into land use and land cover changes and their impacts in Rib watershed, north‐western highland Ethiopia

“…As in the other parts of the world, Ethiopia also faces serious problems of LULC change for long centuries (Getachew & Melesse, 2012;Meshesha et al, 2014;Wubie et al, 2016), usually accompanied by rapid population, urban growth, and poor land use planning. Many recent studies conducted in various parts of Ethiopia (Getachew & Melesse, 2012;Kidane, Stahlmann, & Beierkuhnlein, 2012;Kindu, Schneider, Teketay, & Knoke, 2015;Meire et al, 2013;Meshesha et al, 2014;Shete, Rutten, Schoneveld, & Zewude, 2016;Wubie et al, 2016;Yeshaneh, Wagner, Exner-Kittridge, Legesse, & Blöschl, 2013) have indicated worrying trend of LULC change and its socioeconomic and environmental implication. The LULC change is particularly severe in the highlands of Ethiopia where rain-fed subsistence agriculture is the source of livelihood and the base of economic development (Garedew, Sandewall, & Soderberg, 2012).…”

Availability of Global and National Scale Land Cover Products and Their Accuracy in Mountainous Areas of Ethiopia: A Review

“…Of the 146 publications, 36 were from peer reviewed journals with environmental themes such as Science of the Total Environment [37][38][39][40]; Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment [41][42][43]; Environmental Monitoring and Assessment [7,41,[44][45][46]; Environmental Systems Research [47][48][49]; Preprints (www.preprints.org) | NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 23 July 2018 doi:10.20944/preprints201807.0431.v1…”

“…Fuel wood collection, timber extraction, commercial agriculture and charcoal production are the primary direct drivers. Indirect drivers are population growth, essential for commodities, governance and economic growth [4][5][6][7]. LULC change is also a major challenge with a strong impact on the agricultural development process and the implementation of the country's main development strategies, such as the Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP) developed by Ministry of Finance and Economic Development (MoFED) and the 2011 Climate Resilient Green Economy strategy (CRGE) [8].…”

Socioeconomic Drivers of Spatio-Temporal Land Use/Land Cover Changes in a Rapidly Urbanizing Area of China, the Su-Xi-Chang Region

“…The drivers of these changes may be well known, such as demographic change (Salvati et al, 2017), industrial development , agricultural expansion (Kibret et al, 2016), urbanization (Deng et al, 2015;Xian and Crane, 2005), global market forces (Temesgen et al, 2013), and climatological change, such as drought and rainfall variability (Amuti and Luo, 2014;Biazin and Sterk, 2013; Luo and Zhang, 2014; Román-Cuesta et al, 2014), or they may also involve interactions of institutional or cultural impacts (Kindu et al, 2015;Sakayarote and Shrestha, 2017). These drivers have triggered drastic LULC conversions by substituting one type of LULC with another.…”