Abstract:
Abstract: Land use/cover changes are pervasive with no clear understanding of their spatial extends, drivers and impacts to society.
Land-use changes have become a key component in the current strategies for managing and monitoring the natural resources and
environment changes. The purpose of this study was to assess the land covers change and decline in sugarcane farming using a three
time series of Landsat satellite images of 1984, 2000 and 2015. The study was guided by the following specific objectives: to determine
the characteristics of land use land cover using Landsat images. Primary data collection involved actual field visit to capture GPS points
while secondary data were collected from different sources composed of different kinds such as: landsat images, population data,
topographical sheets, Google earth, road and rainfall data among others. Data integration involved combining data from different
sources to enable evaluate driving forces and impacts of land use/cover change.Image pre-processing included: image spatial subsetting,
radiometric correction, pan sharpening and image enhancement. Image processing involved supervised classification method
with maximum likelihood algorithm in determination of six classes of land use/cover. Error matrix as opposed to single data assessment
was used to determine the accuracy of each classified image and found within acceptable limits. The analysed data were presented in the
form of maps, tales and graphs. The findings on land use/cover image map from processed data revealed six information classes as
sugarcane, maize, other vegetation, built-up, water body and bare land. Maize and sugarcane had the most significant land use/cover
changes with 54% increase and 39% reduction respectively. The driving forces included population, size of land and transport
infrastructure. Encroachment into other land use fields haphazardly in search of space to live, farm and work indicates lack of proper
physical planning and management of land use.The findings finally revealed that land use changes especially decline in sugarcane
farming brought economic downfall to society since most farmers earned their living from it. The study recommended that information
about land use/cover should be provided consistently to control discipline on human and natural action on land having human
dimension as greatest factor of land use/cover change. The technique can aid in proper management of land use as planned.Remotely
sense data therefore should find use in all fields of application with agreeable results.
