Impacts of farming and herding activities on land use and land cover changes in the north eastern corridor of Ghana: A comprehensive analysis

ABSTRACT

This study was conducted to investigate the effect of farming and pasture area extensions on land use and land cover in the North Eastern Corridor of Ghana. Landsat 5 TM⁺ image period of 2000 and Landsat 8 TOA satellite for the periods 2013 and 2022 were used. All images were captured at approximately the same period to ensure the selected images had the same reflectance values. A supervised machine learning technique using the algorithm of the random forest classifier was employed for the preparation of the classification of thematic maps. The Markov chain model was used to examine the dynamics of land use and land cover (LULC) changes in the study area. Visual appraisal of the images indicated some level of notable changes across the various classes from 2000 to 2022. The trend of the various changes in percentage terms also supports this observation. The results reveal that there was an improvement in the vegetation cover from 2000 to 2013 as reflected in the maximum and median NDVI values of the classified images within the period. However, the results show a considerable decline in vegetation health from 2013 to 22. Based on these results, we recommend that a more in-depth analysis to identify other possible anthropogenic activities and factors, that may serve as significant underlying causes of these vegetation cover changes in the region. The Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) should train farmers to incorporate tree planting into their farming whilst avoiding deforestation and bush burning within the area.

KEYWORDS:

• land use land cover change
• extension of farming
• markov chain model
• normalized difference vegetation index
• remote sensing data

Acknowledgements

Data collection for this work was sponsored by the Access and Authority Nexus in Farmer-Herder Conflicts (AAN Project), a Danida-funded project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

NY and JKB conceived, designed the research, analysed the data and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. JK and AA made critical revisions and approved the final version. All the authors contributed to the writing of the manuscript, revisions, and agree with the manuscript results and conclusions. All authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript.

Data availability statement

Data used for this work is a public data that was downloaded from Google Earth Engine. Landsat 5 TM⁺ image period of 2000 and Landsat 8 TOA satellite image for the periods 2013 and 2022. Code for data extraction was obtained through the link below https://code.earthengine.google.com/

R-codes for data processing and analysis are available on request

Notes

1. Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) are two different terms that represent the interaction between humans and the natural land surface. Land use represents the activities of humans on land which in this study focuses on farming and herding activities; whereas land cover is a representation of the natural cover or envelope of the land surface (undisturbed land).

2. The north eastern part of the country is a hot spot for violent farmer—herder clashes due to competition for farming and grazing lands which also affect land use land cover changes.

3. Remote sensing refers to the process whereby the physical characteristics or features of an area (northern eastern Ghana) are been measured using its reflected and emitted radiation from a distance in order to monitor and detect any change.

4. Geospatial analysis is the activity of collecting, combining, and visualizing various types of geospatial data such as satellite imagery as adopted for this study.