Land Use Land Cover Change And Its Impacts On The Urban Fringe Environment And The Farmers’ Livelihood: The Case Of Burayu Town, Ethiopia

Abstract

The rapid increase in population and urbanization continue to exert growing pressure on resources in most cities of Ethiopia. Burayu town has been attracting migrants from all over the country resulting in escalating congestion. The resultant effect of these phenomena is the sprawl of human settlements in peri-urban areas. This study was therefore aimed to assess the land-use land cover change and its impacts on the urban fringe environment and the farmers‟ livelihood: at Burayu town, Ethiopia. The study used primary and secondary sources of data. A multi temporal set of Remote Sensing data was used to classify Land sat images of Burayu town for the years 1987, 1999 and 2019 to know the extent of land-use and land cover change. Questionnaires survey was also used to get data on the impacts of land-use land cover changes in the study area. A total of 70 Household heads were involved in this study. In addition, Focus Group Discussion and Key Informant Interviews were use for data triangulation. This study used ERDAS imagine software and Arc GIS 9.2 for data analysis. Supervised classification system tool of ERDAS Imagine has been used to classify the images of different land use categories. Four land use classes have been identified: Urban (Built-up), water body, open field/grass, forest/vegetation cover, and cultivated land/agricultural land. For this, the satellite images of Land sat 5, 7 and 8 were used to assess the changes. SPSS software version 23.0 was also used to analyze the data obtained via questionnaires. This study has found that urban built area was increased from 20.08% in 1987 to 64.42% in 2019, whereas farmlands, vegetation and open field/grassland coverage were declined from 66.50% to 21.6%, 13.97% to 6.69% and 11.68% to 5.70%, respectively from 1987 to 2019. The study also revealed that population growth; government Lease policy and development induced factors were the associated factors for the LULCC. About 87.12% of the household heads strongly condemned the town expansion. About 95.7% of them stated that urban expansion induced high environmental problems such as discharging untreated industrial wastewater and unmanaged solid waste generation to the environment. The study therefore recommended proper planning policies, development of an eco-city model and affordable housing in the town.