Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Urban Growth Using Integrated Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques in Nigeria, Lagos State as a Case Study

The rapid expansion of urban areas as a result of population growth and economic prosperity is causing land use and land cover (LULC) changes in cities all over the world. Lagos state Nigeria is no exception to this trend, as one of Africa's fastest-growing cities, which experienced remarkable urban growth due to rapid urbanization. Consequently, a large population will burden the already fragile ecosystems that characterize the urban landscape. Thus, the objective of this study was to analyze land use and land cover changes in Lagos state Nigeria by applying geospatial and land use change modeling tools such as geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing technologies. Therefore, understanding and quantifying the spatiotemporal dynamics of urban land use and land cover changes and its driving factors is essential to put forward the right policies and monitoring mechanisms on urban growth for decision making. In order to achieve this, satellite data of Landsat TM for year 2000 and ETM for year 2020 have been obtained and preprocessed using QGIS applications. The Maximum Likelihood Algorithm of Supervised Classification has been used to generate land cover maps. For the accuracy of classified land cover maps, a confusion matrix was used to derive overall accuracy and results were above the minimum and acceptable threshold level. Generally, the results of this study have shown that there was an increased expansion of built-up areas in last 20 years from 50% in 2000 to 57 % in 2020 and 5% in 2000 at the expense of bare soil areas to 8% in 2020, that is the temporal period between2000 and 2020 showed the highest conversion of vegetation and water area to urban areas. The spatial trend of built-up areas also showed that there was a growing trend in the western part of Lagos state relative to other directions.