Monitoring of Land Use and Land Cover Change using Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques: A Case Study of Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania

Change detection techniques using Remote Sensed imagery and Geographic Information System (GIS) is useful in understanding qualitative and quantitative Lands use and Land cover patterns. Mount Kilimanjaro is one of the highest mountains in Africa with various attractive scenes including the flora, fauna and glaciers at the peak. The forest cover of the mountain has been disappearing very fast for the past two decades. As a result the living organisms are exposed, causing a great threat to the ecosystem of the mountain. This study presents evidence showing land cover and land use changes around Mt. Kilimanjaro for the period of twelve years from 2000 - 2012. Landsat 7 satellite imageries of three different periods were acquired to quantify the changes of the mountain for 2000, 2006 and 2012. Supervised classification method has been used by employing maximum likelihood technique in ArcMap Software. The Landsat 7 images were divided into nine different categories namely glacier, rock type1, rock type 2, thick forest, medium forest, farms, water body, built-up and bare land. The results indicate that for the past 12 years, about 6712 hectares of medium forest of the mountain have been converted into settlements amounting to 6.11 %. Agriculture, barren land and water body has been decreased by 1.52 %, 5.46 %, and 0.08 % respectively. The paper finally emphasizes the need to use remote sensing and GIS technologies to monitor land use and land cover changes more frequently as deforestation and illegal logging are threatening the existence of Mt. Kilimanjaro ecosystem.