Land use and land cover (LULC) changes can pose profound impacts on wildlife habitats, abundance and distribution and on human-dominated landscapes. We investigated LULC changes in the Greater Serengeti ecosystem, Tanzania, for a period of 41 years from 1975 to 2015. Specifically, we mapped LULC types for 1975, 1995 and 2015 and assessed the corresponding changes during 1975-1995, 1995-2015 and 1975-2015. We used the random forest classification algorithm to classify Multispectral Scanner (MSS), Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (+ETM) and Operational Land Imager (OLI) into eight main classes. We obtained accuracies of 88.4%, 90.6% and 93.4% with Kappa Indices of Agreement (KIA) of 0.86, 0.87 and 0.91 for 1975, 1995 and 2015, respectively. Grassland, shrubland and woodland were the major LULC types throughout 1975-2015 with percentage coverages of 50.6%, 23.7% and 20.9% for 1975; 54.2%, 23.5% and 15.9% for 1995; and 57.0%, 23.8% and 8.9% for 2015, respectively. Overall, woodland cover (-11.1%) was converted to most of the other cover types during 1975-2015. The loss of woodland cover is due to increasing human population size, agriculture, settlements and policy changes fires and elephant browsing. Effective conservation policies and regulation of socio-economic activities in the ecosystem and its buffer area are essential to ameliorate declining vegetation cover, especially along the protected areas boundaries.
| Published in | American Journal of Remote Sensing (Volume 8, Issue 1) |
| DOI | 10.11648/j.ajrs.20200801.11 |
| Page(s) | 1-19 |
| Creative Commons |
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Copyright |
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Science Publishing Group |
Land Use and Cover Change, Land Cover Transformation, Random Forest Classification, GIS and Remote Sensing, Serengeti Ecosystem, Wildlife Habitats
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APA Style
Hamza Khalid Kija, Joseph Ochieng Ogutu, Lazaro Johana Mangewa, John Bukombe, Francesca Verones, et al. (2020). Land Use and Land Cover Change Within and Around the Greater Serengeti Ecosystem, Tanzania. American Journal of Remote Sensing, 8(1), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajrs.20200801.11
ACS Style
Hamza Khalid Kija; Joseph Ochieng Ogutu; Lazaro Johana Mangewa; John Bukombe; Francesca Verones, et al. Land Use and Land Cover Change Within and Around the Greater Serengeti Ecosystem, Tanzania. Am. J. Remote Sens. 2020, 8(1), 1-19. doi: 10.11648/j.ajrs.20200801.11
AMA Style
Hamza Khalid Kija, Joseph Ochieng Ogutu, Lazaro Johana Mangewa, John Bukombe, Francesca Verones, et al. Land Use and Land Cover Change Within and Around the Greater Serengeti Ecosystem, Tanzania. Am J Remote Sens. 2020;8(1):1-19. doi: 10.11648/j.ajrs.20200801.11
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author = {Hamza Khalid Kija and Joseph Ochieng Ogutu and Lazaro Johana Mangewa and John Bukombe and Francesca Verones and Bente Jessen Graae and Jafari Ramadhani Kideghesho and Mohammed Yahya Said and Emmanuel Fred Nzunda},
title = {Land Use and Land Cover Change Within and Around the Greater Serengeti Ecosystem, Tanzania},
journal = {American Journal of Remote Sensing},
volume = {8},
number = {1},
pages = {1-19},
doi = {10.11648/j.ajrs.20200801.11},
url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajrs.20200801.11},
eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ajrs.20200801.11},
abstract = {Land use and land cover (LULC) changes can pose profound impacts on wildlife habitats, abundance and distribution and on human-dominated landscapes. We investigated LULC changes in the Greater Serengeti ecosystem, Tanzania, for a period of 41 years from 1975 to 2015. Specifically, we mapped LULC types for 1975, 1995 and 2015 and assessed the corresponding changes during 1975-1995, 1995-2015 and 1975-2015. We used the random forest classification algorithm to classify Multispectral Scanner (MSS), Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (+ETM) and Operational Land Imager (OLI) into eight main classes. We obtained accuracies of 88.4%, 90.6% and 93.4% with Kappa Indices of Agreement (KIA) of 0.86, 0.87 and 0.91 for 1975, 1995 and 2015, respectively. Grassland, shrubland and woodland were the major LULC types throughout 1975-2015 with percentage coverages of 50.6%, 23.7% and 20.9% for 1975; 54.2%, 23.5% and 15.9% for 1995; and 57.0%, 23.8% and 8.9% for 2015, respectively. Overall, woodland cover (-11.1%) was converted to most of the other cover types during 1975-2015. The loss of woodland cover is due to increasing human population size, agriculture, settlements and policy changes fires and elephant browsing. Effective conservation policies and regulation of socio-economic activities in the ecosystem and its buffer area are essential to ameliorate declining vegetation cover, especially along the protected areas boundaries.},
year = {2020}
}
TY - JOUR T1 - Land Use and Land Cover Change Within and Around the Greater Serengeti Ecosystem, Tanzania AU - Hamza Khalid Kija AU - Joseph Ochieng Ogutu AU - Lazaro Johana Mangewa AU - John Bukombe AU - Francesca Verones AU - Bente Jessen Graae AU - Jafari Ramadhani Kideghesho AU - Mohammed Yahya Said AU - Emmanuel Fred Nzunda Y1 - 2020/04/29 PY - 2020 N1 - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajrs.20200801.11 DO - 10.11648/j.ajrs.20200801.11 T2 - American Journal of Remote Sensing JF - American Journal of Remote Sensing JO - American Journal of Remote Sensing SP - 1 EP - 19 PB - Science Publishing Group SN - 2328-580X UR - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajrs.20200801.11 AB - Land use and land cover (LULC) changes can pose profound impacts on wildlife habitats, abundance and distribution and on human-dominated landscapes. We investigated LULC changes in the Greater Serengeti ecosystem, Tanzania, for a period of 41 years from 1975 to 2015. Specifically, we mapped LULC types for 1975, 1995 and 2015 and assessed the corresponding changes during 1975-1995, 1995-2015 and 1975-2015. We used the random forest classification algorithm to classify Multispectral Scanner (MSS), Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (+ETM) and Operational Land Imager (OLI) into eight main classes. We obtained accuracies of 88.4%, 90.6% and 93.4% with Kappa Indices of Agreement (KIA) of 0.86, 0.87 and 0.91 for 1975, 1995 and 2015, respectively. Grassland, shrubland and woodland were the major LULC types throughout 1975-2015 with percentage coverages of 50.6%, 23.7% and 20.9% for 1975; 54.2%, 23.5% and 15.9% for 1995; and 57.0%, 23.8% and 8.9% for 2015, respectively. Overall, woodland cover (-11.1%) was converted to most of the other cover types during 1975-2015. The loss of woodland cover is due to increasing human population size, agriculture, settlements and policy changes fires and elephant browsing. Effective conservation policies and regulation of socio-economic activities in the ecosystem and its buffer area are essential to ameliorate declining vegetation cover, especially along the protected areas boundaries. VL - 8 IS - 1 ER -
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