Land Use Land Cover Dynamics of Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry Practical Demonstration Site, I1eogbo, Osun State, Nigeria

Abstract

Information on land use and land cover is very essential for change detection and monitoring especially where anthropogenic activities prevail like the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry Practical Demonstration Site at Ileogbo (FAFPDSI). Such formation will help in the management of the site. However, detail information on these changes over time is lacking. Therefore, the land use land cover dynamics of the FAFPDSI was investigated over time in this study. This was with the view of providing information for the sustainable management of the site. Sketch map of Ileogbo was obtained from Physical Planning Unit of University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria. Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper imagery of 2002, 2017 and historical image of 20 13 were obtained. These imageries were subjected to spectral enhancement and geometric corrections. The imagery was subjected to supervised classification method using IDRISI Taiga where four land use types were discovered. The four land use types are forest, bare-land, farmland and built-up. The results showed that natural forest reduced from 104.76 ha in 2002 to 81.41 ha in 2013 and to 71.51 ha in 2017 with a percentage change of -31.74%' Farmland, on the other hand. increased from 60.89 ha in 2002 to 66.04 ha in 2013 and to 68.28 ha in 2017 with a percentage change of 12.09%. The rate of deforestation was recorded ~t 2.22 ha/yr. The forest land in the study area is reducing' at an alarming rate. Bare-land and farmland are replacing the forest. The study has revealed the efficiencies of remote sensing and GIS techniques for data capturing to produce reliable information on the land use/land cover and the changes that has occurred over time.