Assessment of Land Use and Land Cover Changes in Errahad Locality, Sudan, Using Remote Sensing and GIS

The study aimed to identify, assess and mapping of land use and land cover in the period of 1985 to 2015 in Errahad Locality in North Kordofan State, Sudan. In addition, to investigate the impacts of socio-economic activities on land use and land cover. Three landsat images with multi-temporal dates (TM 1985, TM 1995 and Landsat8 OLI 2015) were acquired in dry season. The images were geo-referenced and radiometrically corrected. Image classifications using supervised classification system by maximum likelihood were applied. A total number of 200 control points were registered using GPS. In the social survey, 50 respondents representing household were randomly interviewed using structured questionnaire with sampling percentage of 6% of the household in five villages. Remotely sensed data were processed and analyzed using ERDAS 9.1 and ArcGIS10.0 software, while social survey data were analyzed using Excel and SPSS. version18.0. Results showed that land use and land cover in Errahad Locality were identified and classified into six classes; bare lands, range lands, forests, agricultural lands, shrub lands and water bodies. The change of land use and land cover during the period 1985, 1995 and 2015 is indicated by the increase of agricultural lands as 14.34%, 23.08 and 28.87%, respectively. Also the range lands were increased from 23.46% (1995) to 26.04% (2015). However, during the same periods, forests and shrubs classes are decreasing from 14.61% to 11.56% and from 27.42% to 12.43%, respectively. The overall accuracy assessment of classified imagery from TM (1985), ETM+ (1995) and landsat8 LOI (2015) revealed 81%, 84% and 91% in Kappa statistics, respectively. The results of social survey revealed that 90% of the respondents owned a piece of the land in term of personal and tribal basis. The results confirmed that 50% of the respondents stated that overcutting of the trees (50%) climate change (10%) are most factors affecting the vegetation cover and land use. The study concluded with a witnessed degradation processes mainly in vegetation cover as a consequence of agricultural land expansion. The study recommended adoption of appropriate conservation and rehabilitation measures in forest and rangelands.