Analysis of Trend and Dynamics of Urban Sprawl in Minna Niger State Nigeria

Abstract

Urban Sprawl in Minna is a phenomenon that is quite pronounced with many unsustainable impacts, consequently raising concern for environmental sustainability. This research evaluates Urban Sprawl dynamics in terms of its magnitude, direction and nature of occurrence by integrating Remote Sensing, GIS tools and Shannon's Entropy. The Landsat images of the study area acquired for the years 1990, 2000,2010 and 2017 were processed and classified, the result shows that land use land cover is rapidly being transformed into built up area. The images were further divided into concentric buffer zones easily adoptable by relative Shannon's entropy, due to its high flexibility and the fact that it is unrestricted by the number of divisions used, the relative Shannon's entropy as calculated, It revealed that in 1990 and 2000 urban sprawl has low magnitude with compact form of settlement, while in the year 2010 and 2017 it became evenly dispersed with higher magnitudes and directed towards the south-western part of the study area ,it shows that urban sprawl had always increased in its rates of dispersal throughout the period of the study, it is gradually be-coming compact, as indicated by changes in its pattern from 2010 to 2017, showing increasing signs of environmental problems and decaying urban infrastructure. This research provides information about the pattern of urban sprawl which will help environmental managers in decision making. It is recommended that the rate of urban sprawl and increasing environmental decay should be matched with proportionate economic growth and environmentally friendly development practices.