Land Use/Land Cover Changes in a Disturbed River Watershed Kenya

Abstract

Drivers of land use change were captured by the use of DPSIR model where Drivers (D) represented human needs, Pressures (P), human activities, State (S), the ecosystem, Impact (I) services from the ecosystem and Response (R), the decisions taken by land users. Land sat MSS and Land sat ETM+ (path 185, row 31) were used in this study. The Land sat ETM+ image (June 1987, May, 2000 and July, 2014) was downloaded from USGS Earth Resources Observation Systems data website. Remote sensing image processing was performed by using ERDAS Imagine 9.1. Two land use/land cover (LULC) classes were established as forest and shrub land. Severe land cover changes was found to have occurred from 1987-2000, where shrub land reduced by -19 percent, and forestry reduced by -72 percent. In 2000 – 2014 shrub land reduced by-45 percent, and forestry reduced by -64 percent. Forestry and shrub land were found to be consistently reducing.