This study assessed the extent and trend of landuse/cover change in Soroti District, Uganda. A series of systematically corrected Orthorectified Landsat imageries of 1973, 1986 and 2001 were downloaded from the Landsat website. The images were analysed using unsupervised classification approach and the land-use/cover were validated and/or reconstructed by ground truthing, use of secondary data, and key informants. The study establishes that; small-scale farming was the major landuse type (24.2%) and grasslands were the dominant landcover unit (26.1%) in 1973. Small-scale farming however declined by 5.3% in 1986 due to prevailing insurgence at the time while grasslands gained by 2.9%. In 2001, small-scale farming had increased by 13.6% at the expense of woodlands (-2.3%), Bushlands(-5.5%), Forest stock (-2.2%) and wetlands (-0.44) that experienced declines. This drastic gain in small-scale farming is likely to treat negative environmental effects such as intensity of floods and droughts, soil nutrient and biodiversity loss due habitat conversion.
Landuse/Cover Change Trend in Soroti District Eastern Uganda
Published 2010 in Journal of Applied Sciences and Environmental Management
ABSTRACT
PUBLICATION RECORD
- Publication year
2010
- Venue
Journal of Applied Sciences and Environmental Management
- Publication date
2010-06-10
- Fields of study
Geography, Environmental Science
- Identifiers
- External record
- Source metadata
Semantic Scholar
CITATION MAP
EXTRACTION MAP
CLAIMS
CONCEPTS
- bushlands
Shrub- or bush-dominated areas identified as one of the land-cover classes.
Aliases: bushland
- forest stock
Forest-covered areas treated as a distinct land-cover class in the analysis.
Aliases: forest
- grasslands
Open herbaceous land-cover areas mapped as a distinct cover class in the district.
Aliases: grassland
- ground truthing
Field-based verification used to check or reconstruct interpreted land-use and land-cover classes.
Aliases: ground truth
- insurgency
The period of armed insecurity cited as a contextual factor affecting land-use change in 1986.
Aliases: prevailing insurgence
- key informants
Local or knowledgeable respondents consulted to help verify or reconstruct land-use and land-cover information.
- land-use/cover classes
The mapped categories used to represent land use and land cover in the study area.
Aliases: land-use/cover, landuse/cover
- orthorectified landsat imagery
Landsat satellite images that have been geometrically corrected for terrain and sensor distortions for land-cover mapping.
Aliases: corrected Orthorectified Landsat imageries, Landsat imagery
- small-scale farming
An agricultural land-use class representing smallholder cultivation within the district.
Aliases: small scale farming
- unsupervised classification
An image classification method that groups pixels into clusters without using pre-labeled training samples.
Aliases: unsupervised classification approach
- woodlands
Areas dominated by woody vegetation that were mapped as a land-cover class in the district.
Aliases: woodland
REFERENCES
Showing 1-6 of 6 references · Page 1 of 1
CITED BY
Showing 1-12 of 12 citing papers · Page 1 of 1