Land Use/Land Cover Change and Its Driving Forces in Shenkolla Watershed, South Central Ethiopia

Land use change is one of the challenges that aggravate environmental problems. Understanding the scope of land use change, driving forces, and consequences is very crucial for proper management of land resources. We investigated land use/land cover changes using remote sensing data (for the years 1973, 1995, and 2017), and field observation, household survey, key informant interview, and focus group discussion were used to determine the drivers and consequences of land use/land cover changes in Shenkolla watershed, south central Ethiopia. Unsupervised and supervised classification techniques were employed to get thematic information from satellite imagery. ArcGIS 10.3 and QGIS v 3.0 softwares were used to accomplish the analysis. The results disclosed that Shenkolla watershed has changed significantly during the past 4 decades between 1973 and 2017. This observed change indicates a reduction in forest land and an increase in agricultural land. Forest land was reduced from 29.51% in 1973 to 20.52% in 2017, but agricultural land was expanded from 70.49% in 1973 to 79.48% in 2017. Agricultural expansion, policy change and social unrest, population pressure, shortage of farm land, and biophysical factors were major driving forces of the LU/LC changes. Environmental implications such as climate change, biodiversity loss, scarcity of basic forest products, habitat alteration, decline in quality and availability of water, and crop yield reduction are the consequences of the LU/LC change. The expansion of agricultural land at the expense of forest cover in Shenkolla watershed has negative implications on the natural resources and the livelihood of local people. Hence, appropriate measures need to be employed to reduce the dramatic change in land use and to harmonize environmental conservation with human livelihood.