Urban expansion and vegetal cover loss in and around Nigeria's Federal Capital City

Since Abuja became Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory in 1976; it has been experiencing rapid expansion, urbanization and significant changes in its physical landscape. This study used Remote sensing and GIS techniques to identify, mark and measure the extent of change in the various land uses from the Landsat imageries of 1987 and 2001, and Nigeriasat-1 imagery of 2006. The study revealed that while built-up area increased, vegetation cover decreased at an alarming rate. Using population figures of the study area for 1987, 2001 and 2006, the Land Consumption Rate (LCR) and Land Absorption Coefficient (LAC) were determined. Increasing population and expansion in the Federal Capital City (FCC) resulted in land degradation including loss of vegetal cover, indiscriminate waste disposal, contamination of surface water, etc. now clearly visible in the FCC. In view of the important role that vegetation plays as a carbon sink, policy-makers are requested to strictly enforce the existing laws on afforestation and parks establishment and other measures, within and around the FCC in order to achieve a sustainable urban growth and development.

[1]  R. Mittermeier,et al.  Wilderness: Earth's Last Wild Places , 2003 .

[2]  K. Mizuno,et al.  An analysis of land use/cover change in Indonesia , 1996 .

[3]  Caspar A. Mücher,et al.  Land cover classification with the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS). , 2004 .

[4]  Rajeshwari.  Management of the Urban Environment Using Remote Sensing and Geographical Information Systems , 2006 .

[5]  William B. Meyer,et al.  Modeling land use and cover as part of global environmental change , 1994 .

[6]  O. Ifatimehin,et al.  Application of Geoninformatic Technology in Evaluating Urban Agriculture and Urban Poverty in Lokoja, Nigeria , 2008 .

[7]  Shahab Fazal.  Urban expansion and loss of agricultural land - a GIS based study of Saharanpur City, India , 2000 .

[8]  A. Sorensen,et al.  Land Readjustment and Metropolitan Growth: An Examination of Suburban Land Development and Urban Sprawl in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area , 2000 .

[9]  Liu Sheng,et al.  A GIS based Model of Urban Land Use Growth in Beijing , 2000 .

[10]  S. Ghosh,et al.  Land-use and land-cover change and future implication analysis in Manas National Park, India using multi-temporal satellite data , 2008 .

[11]  E. Lambin,et al.  Dynamics of Land-Use and Land-Cover Change in Tropical Regions , 2003 .

[12]  Paul Schot,et al.  Land use change modelling: current practice and research priorities , 2004 .

[13]  J. Finn,et al.  Remote sensing imagery for natural resources monitoring : a guide for first-time users , 1996 .

[14]  Yadvinder Malhi,et al.  State of the World's Forests 2001 , 2001 .

[15]  Christopher O. Justice,et al.  The Miombo Network: Framework for a Terrestrial Transect Study of Land-Use and Land-Cover Change in the Miombo Ecosystems of Central Africa , 1997 .

[16]  E. Weil,et al.  Bacteria associated with the coral Echinopora lamellosa (Esper 1795) in the Indian Ocean-Zanzibar Region , 2007 .

[17]  S Ramachandran,et al.  Application of Remote Sensing and Gis , 2022 .

[18]  Qihao Weng,et al.  Land Use and Land Cover Change in Guangzhou, China, from 1998 to 2003, Based on Landsat TM /ETM+ Imagery , 2007, Sensors (Basel, Switzerland).

[19]  A. O. Arimoro,et al.  The Need and Use of Geographic Information Systems for Environmental Impact Assessment in Africa: With Example From Ten Years Experience in Nigeria , 2002 .

[20]  Biodiversity management using remotely sensed data and GIS technologies: The case of Digya National Park, Ghana , 2005 .

[21]  P. Verburg,et al.  GIS-based modeling of human-environment interactions for natural resource management , 2000 .

[22]  D. Njomo.  MAPPING DEFORESTATION IN THE CONGO BASIN FOREST USING MULTI-TEMPORAL SPOT-VGT IMAGERY FROM 2000 TO 2004 , 2008 .

[23]  Barry J. Garner,et al.  The North American city , 1973 .