Spatiotemporal Change of Urban Sprawl Patterns in Bamako District in Mali Based on Time Series Analysis

For decades, urban sprawl has remained a major challenge for big cities in developing countries, such as Bamako. The aim of this study is to analyze urban sprawl pattern changes over time in the Bamako district using landscape index analyses. Four thematic maps of land cover (LC) were produced by applying the maximum likelihood supervised classification method on Landsat images for 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2018. Five landscape indexes were selected and calculated at class level and landscape level using FRAGSTATS software. The results showed that the dominant class for all the years within the landscape was a built-up class. Forest class covered the smallest area in terms of the percentage of land (%PLAND), and was the weakest class in terms of number of patches (NP) and largest patch index (LPI). Grassland is defined as the class with the highest fragmentation, farmland with the highest shape irregularity and more heterogeneity, and built-up with the highest patches. Class area (CA) of built-up showed the importance of sprawl in Communes 6, 5, and 4, respectively. Indices trends and land use/cover showed infill, scattered, and ribbon developments of sprawl. This study contributes toward monitoring long-term urban sprawl patterns using index analyses.