Land Conversions and Forest Dynamics in a Riparian Forest Zone in South East Nigeria
Land Conversions and Forest Dynamics in a Riparian Forest Zone in South East Nigeria DOI: https://doi.org/10.30564/jgr.v2i4.1449 Abstract The rate at which forest ecosystems are lost and modified across tropicallandscapes are alarming, yet proper documentation and proactive measures to curtail this still remains a huge challenge in most areas. Thisresearch focused on elucidating the ongoing land use change patternsof a riparian forest landscape, its current impacts on the ecosystem andland surface temperature, as well as its likely future scenarios for thezone. LANDSAT images were downloaded for 1988, 2003 and 2018and used to show the dynamics for the zone, its drivers and their varyingtemperatures. Maximum Likelihood Classification algorithm was usedfor the classification and the land-use classes were categorized as: Waterbody, Farms and Sparse Vegetation, Built-up Areas, Bare Surface, andThick Vegetation. Furthermore, Markov Chain Analysis was employedfor understanding the futur...