Spatiotemporal Analysis of Land Use Land Cover Dynamics of Adama District, Ethiopia and its Implication to Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

The uncontrolled change of land use land cover enhances the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This study, therefore, aimed at spatiotemporal analysis of land use land cover dynamics and its implication to greenhouse gas emissions of Adama District, Ethiopia. Dry season landsat image TM of 1986, ETM of 2000 and ETM of 2014 were downloaded from U.S. Geological Survey Global Visualization Viewer Website and employed. Hybrid classification approach was done after the preprocessing of the image. Moreover, observations, key informant interviews and focus group discussions were used. Analysis was carried out using the image data and survey data. The result indicates that agricultural land and shrub and bush land covered 80.98%, 76.75% and 74.42% of study area during 1986, 2000 and 2014 respectively. Though there are differences in magnitudes and rates of change during the considered years, land use land cover classification results of this study indicated that most of natural environments are converted to the human dominated environment attributed to human induced activities. Due to this conversion, environmental degradation would be aggravated which again paves the way for the increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The study concludes that largely as a result of interventions from the communities living in the area, the study area is being transformed from the natural ecosystem to managed environment. Hence, practices of smallholder farmers with respect to area closures, afforestation and reforestation needs to be strengthened and supported by integrated policy framework. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.