Dynamics of Land use Change: A Case Study of Lafia, Nasarawa State, Nigeria

Dynamics of landuse change was carried out in Lafia, Nasarawa State, Nigeria to ascertain the level of changes in the land between the period 1997 and 2016. The imageries used include LANDSAT ETM of 1997 and NIGERSAT -1 of 2016. The various classes of landuse adopted are; cultivated area, bare surface, built-up area,
natural vegetation and water bodies. The supervised method of landuse analysis was used in the extraction of the information from the imageries in ArcGis 9.3 environment. The results obtained showed that bare surface accounted for 0.72% in 1997 and increased to 1.91% in 2016, built up area occupy land cover of
2.63% in 1986 and by 2005, it increased to 3.55%, cultivated area covers 27.88% in 1997 and in 2016, it increased to 56.57%. Natural vegetation, which includes all forested area and grass land in 1997 decreased in 2016 to 25.43% and water bodies, which include all the surface water found in the study area such as ponds, streams, rivers, marshes and lakes covered 9.43% in 1997 while in 2016, it increased to 12.53%. It can be concluded that despite the adverse effects of the changes on the environment, the study area can be seen as developing as there is increase in the built up areas and increase in cultivated area as these are reducing the vegetation of the study area a deliberate attempt should be made to incorporate tree planting as part of the building policy in the study area.