Effects of Land Use and Land Cover Change on Tse Gavar Forest Reserve, Vandeikya Local Government Area, Benue State, Nigeria

Abstract

Forests are considered to be the very basis for human existence as they touch virtually every aspect of human endeavour. Despite the numerous benefits of forests, the world is experiencing unprecedented degradation of forest and its resources; this is mainly attributed to land use and land cover (LULC) change. Therefore, monitoring of these changes has become a necessity. Hence, the use of remotely sensed data in conjunction with GIS for land use and land cover analysis of Tse Gavar community forest in Vandeikya Local Government Area would definitely enhance the available data for sustainable management and promotion of community forest in the State. This study made use of mostly secondary data from pre-existing satellites imageries. The Landsat TM for 1986, Landsat ETM+ for 2001 and 2012 as well as OLI for 2018 images were sourced from the Earthexplorer platform from United States Geological Surveys (USGS), Global Land Cover Facility (GLCF) and GloVis. Images were subjected to various image processing techniques and supervised classification was carried out on the various images. The classification resulted in classes of farmland, other vegetation, forest area and bare land. The percentage of LULC in Tse Gavar Forest Reserve indicated that farmland increased from 5.78% in 1986 to 18.25% in 2018. Shrubland also increased from 3.06% in 1986 to 21.08% in 2018. Forested area decreased from 84.17% in 1986 to 59.38% in 2018. The magnitude of land use/land cover change within the 32 years period showed that 9.36 Ha of the forest area was lost to other forms of land use, the bare land area lost within the period was 0.09 Ha to other land uses. Farmland area increased by 4.32 Ha within the period, shrubland increased by 5078.88 km2. It was established that just like other protected areas, land use and land cover changes are going on in the Tse Gavar community forest reserve. Enrichment planting of the reserve was recommended.