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Land Use and Land Cover Change Within and Around the Greater Serengeti Ecosystem, Tanzania

Received: 3 March 2020     Accepted: 20 March 2020     Published: 29 April 2020
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Abstract

Land use and land cover (LULC) changes can pose profound impacts on wildlife habitats, abundance and distribution and on human-dominated landscapes. We investigated LULC changes in the Greater Serengeti ecosystem, Tanzania, for a period of 41 years from 1975 to 2015. Specifically, we mapped LULC types for 1975, 1995 and 2015 and assessed the corresponding changes during 1975-1995, 1995-2015 and 1975-2015. We used the random forest classification algorithm to classify Multispectral Scanner (MSS), Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (+ETM) and Operational Land Imager (OLI) into eight main classes. We obtained accuracies of 88.4%, 90.6% and 93.4% with Kappa Indices of Agreement (KIA) of 0.86, 0.87 and 0.91 for 1975, 1995 and 2015, respectively. Grassland, shrubland and woodland were the major LULC types throughout 1975-2015 with percentage coverages of 50.6%, 23.7% and 20.9% for 1975; 54.2%, 23.5% and 15.9% for 1995; and 57.0%, 23.8% and 8.9% for 2015, respectively. Overall, woodland cover (-11.1%) was converted to most of the other cover types during 1975-2015. The loss of woodland cover is due to increasing human population size, agriculture, settlements and policy changes fires and elephant browsing. Effective conservation policies and regulation of socio-economic activities in the ecosystem and its buffer area are essential to ameliorate declining vegetation cover, especially along the protected areas boundaries.

Published in American Journal of Remote Sensing (Volume 8, Issue 1)
DOI 10.11648/j.ajrs.20200801.11
Page(s) 1-19
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Land Use and Cover Change, Land Cover Transformation, Random Forest Classification, GIS and Remote Sensing, Serengeti Ecosystem, Wildlife Habitats

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Cite This Article
  • APA Style

    Hamza Khalid Kija, Joseph Ochieng Ogutu, Lazaro Johana Mangewa, John Bukombe, Francesca Verones, et al. (2020). Land Use and Land Cover Change Within and Around the Greater Serengeti Ecosystem, Tanzania. American Journal of Remote Sensing, 8(1), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajrs.20200801.11

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    ACS Style

    Hamza Khalid Kija; Joseph Ochieng Ogutu; Lazaro Johana Mangewa; John Bukombe; Francesca Verones, et al. Land Use and Land Cover Change Within and Around the Greater Serengeti Ecosystem, Tanzania. Am. J. Remote Sens. 2020, 8(1), 1-19. doi: 10.11648/j.ajrs.20200801.11

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    AMA Style

    Hamza Khalid Kija, Joseph Ochieng Ogutu, Lazaro Johana Mangewa, John Bukombe, Francesca Verones, et al. Land Use and Land Cover Change Within and Around the Greater Serengeti Ecosystem, Tanzania. Am J Remote Sens. 2020;8(1):1-19. doi: 10.11648/j.ajrs.20200801.11

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ajrs.20200801.11,
      author = {Hamza Khalid Kija and Joseph Ochieng Ogutu and Lazaro Johana Mangewa and John Bukombe and Francesca Verones and Bente Jessen Graae and Jafari Ramadhani Kideghesho and Mohammed Yahya Said and Emmanuel Fred Nzunda},
      title = {Land Use and Land Cover Change Within and Around the Greater Serengeti Ecosystem, Tanzania},
      journal = {American Journal of Remote Sensing},
      volume = {8},
      number = {1},
      pages = {1-19},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ajrs.20200801.11},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajrs.20200801.11},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ajrs.20200801.11},
      abstract = {Land use and land cover (LULC) changes can pose profound impacts on wildlife habitats, abundance and distribution and on human-dominated landscapes. We investigated LULC changes in the Greater Serengeti ecosystem, Tanzania, for a period of 41 years from 1975 to 2015. Specifically, we mapped LULC types for 1975, 1995 and 2015 and assessed the corresponding changes during 1975-1995, 1995-2015 and 1975-2015. We used the random forest classification algorithm to classify Multispectral Scanner (MSS), Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (+ETM) and Operational Land Imager (OLI) into eight main classes. We obtained accuracies of 88.4%, 90.6% and 93.4% with Kappa Indices of Agreement (KIA) of 0.86, 0.87 and 0.91 for 1975, 1995 and 2015, respectively. Grassland, shrubland and woodland were the major LULC types throughout 1975-2015 with percentage coverages of 50.6%, 23.7% and 20.9% for 1975; 54.2%, 23.5% and 15.9% for 1995; and 57.0%, 23.8% and 8.9% for 2015, respectively. Overall, woodland cover (-11.1%) was converted to most of the other cover types during 1975-2015. The loss of woodland cover is due to increasing human population size, agriculture, settlements and policy changes fires and elephant browsing. Effective conservation policies and regulation of socio-economic activities in the ecosystem and its buffer area are essential to ameliorate declining vegetation cover, especially along the protected areas boundaries.},
     year = {2020}
    }
    

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  • TY  - JOUR
    T1  - Land Use and Land Cover Change Within and Around the Greater Serengeti Ecosystem, Tanzania
    AU  - Hamza Khalid Kija
    AU  - Joseph Ochieng Ogutu
    AU  - Lazaro Johana Mangewa
    AU  - John Bukombe
    AU  - Francesca Verones
    AU  - Bente Jessen Graae
    AU  - Jafari Ramadhani Kideghesho
    AU  - Mohammed Yahya Said
    AU  - Emmanuel Fred Nzunda
    Y1  - 2020/04/29
    PY  - 2020
    N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajrs.20200801.11
    DO  - 10.11648/j.ajrs.20200801.11
    T2  - American Journal of Remote Sensing
    JF  - American Journal of Remote Sensing
    JO  - American Journal of Remote Sensing
    SP  - 1
    EP  - 19
    PB  - Science Publishing Group
    SN  - 2328-580X
    UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajrs.20200801.11
    AB  - Land use and land cover (LULC) changes can pose profound impacts on wildlife habitats, abundance and distribution and on human-dominated landscapes. We investigated LULC changes in the Greater Serengeti ecosystem, Tanzania, for a period of 41 years from 1975 to 2015. Specifically, we mapped LULC types for 1975, 1995 and 2015 and assessed the corresponding changes during 1975-1995, 1995-2015 and 1975-2015. We used the random forest classification algorithm to classify Multispectral Scanner (MSS), Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (+ETM) and Operational Land Imager (OLI) into eight main classes. We obtained accuracies of 88.4%, 90.6% and 93.4% with Kappa Indices of Agreement (KIA) of 0.86, 0.87 and 0.91 for 1975, 1995 and 2015, respectively. Grassland, shrubland and woodland were the major LULC types throughout 1975-2015 with percentage coverages of 50.6%, 23.7% and 20.9% for 1975; 54.2%, 23.5% and 15.9% for 1995; and 57.0%, 23.8% and 8.9% for 2015, respectively. Overall, woodland cover (-11.1%) was converted to most of the other cover types during 1975-2015. The loss of woodland cover is due to increasing human population size, agriculture, settlements and policy changes fires and elephant browsing. Effective conservation policies and regulation of socio-economic activities in the ecosystem and its buffer area are essential to ameliorate declining vegetation cover, especially along the protected areas boundaries.
    VL  - 8
    IS  - 1
    ER  - 

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Author Information
  • Department of Wildlife Management, College of Forestry, Wildlife and Tourism, Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, Tanzania

  • Biostatistics Unit, Institute of Crop Science, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany

  • Department of Wildlife Management, College of Forestry, Wildlife and Tourism, Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, Tanzania

  • Conservation Information and Monitoring Unit (CIMU), Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI), Arusha, Tanzania

  • Department of Energy and Process Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

  • Department of Biology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

  • College of African Wildlife Management (CAWM), Moshi, Tanzania

  • Department of Biology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

  • Department of Forest Resources Assessment and Management, College of Forestry, Wildlife and Tourism, Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, Tanzania

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