Mapping Forest Cover Change of Duli Kebele, Kellem Wollega, Ethiopia (Published)
Currently Land use/land cover change has become part of the global science agenda, because the existing forest lands have been destroyed and changed into other land use/land cover type and this had resulted into various calamities that has been regulated by forest such as desertification, flooding, loss of biodiversity, and others. The influence of the land use /land cover change was observed everywhere in the glob including Duli area where the area is previously known by dense forest cover and the coverage were declining now a day from time to time. Hence, the current study was initiated to analyze the dynamics of forest coverage over the past thirty years (1990-2020. For the analysis of the forest coverage dynamics GIS and remote sensing techniques were used. To quantify the magnitude and directions of Land use/land cover change, multi-sensor and multi-temporal Landsat images were accessed from United States Geological Survey. The obtained images were processed and analyzed to generate the information of Land use/land cover change. As a result of analysis from the total area of Duli kebele about 70% were covered by forest. However, through time the forest area has been converted to other land uses/land cover such as grassland, cultivated and settlement. The majority of the converted forest area was changed to grassland, followed by cultivated and settlement. The study revealed that in 1990 the forest cover of Duli kebele was 1509 ha but at the end of the study period (2020) the forest area was reduced to 1356 ha which is the loss of 153 ha of forest. This implies that from the existing forest area 7 % were converted into other land use land cover type. Based on the results it is possible to conclude that the forest resource of the area will be lost in the near future if the current trend is continued. Hence, government and the local community should work in cooperation in order to maximize benefit obtained from forest as well as to sustain the forest resource.
Keywords: Duli, Forest, GIS and remote sensing, Gergeda, Land Cover, land use