Analysis of land use/land cover change trends over Birr River Watershed, Abbay Basin, Ethiopia

Changes in land use/land cover (LULC) are a global environmental concern that has a significant impact on sustainable land and water resource management and development as well as hydrological processes. The pri-mary driving forces of LULC changes in developing countries are population pressure, demand for firewood collection and construction material, shortage of cultivated land, land tenure insecurity, and deforestation. Focusing on the Ethiopian Birr river watershed, the study investigates changes in LULC trends, extents, and magnitudes over the last 32 years using geospatial technologies such as Landsat images of 1986, 2001, and 2018. The supervised land use land cover classification technique was applied to classify the LULC classes using the maximum likelihood algorithm technique. Between 1986 and 2018, agricultural land increased significantly from 56.39% to 70.19%, while settlements increased from 0.73%) to 1.42%. On the other hand, bushlands, forest areas, and grasslands LULC classes in the study area decreased from 26.18% to 19.30%, 4.94%-1.92%, and 11.77%-7.16%, respectively. The findings suggest that integrated watershed management and land use planning should be concerned and implemented in the Birr River watershed.