Special Issue
Diress Yigezu Tenagashaw
Abstract
The main objective of this study is to assess the dynamics of land use/cover changes of Jewaha catchment. The growing demand for food because of population growth has created greater pressure on land resources, as in the case of agriculture and housing. These anthropogenic activities lead to an expansion of agricultural land and urbanization due to deforestation. Deforestation, intense agricultural activities, industry and urban area expansion in a watershed can influence different processes. The satellite data were classified using ERDAS Imagine 2015 software to develop land use/cover maps for 1990, 2000 and 2018 of the Jewaha catchment. The result of image classification showed that the catchment land use/cover change has shown an increase in urban, agriculture and closed shrubs land by 3.98%, 7.4%, and 0.74% respectively, and decrement in the other land uses like forest and open shrubs land by 8.3% and 6.9% respectively.