DYNAMICS OF VEGETAL COVER AND URBANIZATION TREND IN JOS SOUTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF PLATEAU STATE, NIGERIA A GEOSPATIAL APPROACH

Abstract

The high rate of urbanization coupled with population growth has caused changes in land use. Therefore, understanding and quantifying the spatio- temporal dynamics of vegetal cover due to urbanization is essential for monitoring mechanisms and decision making. The study aimed at determining how dynamics of vegetal cover relates to urbanization trend in Jos South Area. Landsat TM for 1991,ETM' and operational land imager (OLI) for 2003 and 2015 was obtained and preprocessed using Erdas Imagine 2014, Idrisi software and ArcGIS 10.2. Maximum Likelihood Classification was used to generate land use and land cover maps of the area. Confusion matrix was used to derive overall accuracy and results were above the minimum and acceptable threshold level. Land Change Modeler was run to model land use and land cover changes in Jos South Area to predict future urban land use trend and changes. Six land cover transitions were incorporated in the modeling process. Makovian transition estimator was used to model the transition potential matrix. This result of which was used to make prediction using CA_Markov chain analysis for year 2039. The results revealed there was an increase in built up areas in the last 24 years from 535.68ha (1.18%) in 1991 to 4608.99ha (10.17%) in 2003 and 15600.96ha (34.43%) in 2015 at the expense of vegetal cover. The prediction results showed built up will increase from 15600.96ha (34.43%) to 20972.88ha (46.29 while vegetal cover will decrease from 4675.86ha (10.32%) to 3125.34ha (6.90. The study concluded that geospatial techniques are a viable tool for assessing urbanization trend and dynamics of vegetal cover. It was recommended that high resolution imageries such as IKONOS be made readily available, because urban areas have complex and heterogonous features, and this will provide better information in mapping these areas.