Land Use/Land Cover Change Modeling and Evaluating the Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Highland Bamboo Species in the Southern Highland of Ethiopia

Understanding the extent of land use/land cover (LULC) change and predicting its trajectories is vital for policymakers designing sustainable natural resource management strategies. To measure, visualize, and forecast LULC transitions and spatiotemporal dynamics of highland bamboo in the southern highland of Ethiopia, this study used multispectral Landsat imagery from the Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM +), and Operational Land Imager (OLI) from three acquisition years: 1988, 2003, and 2019. Bamboo LULC was extracted using a combination of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) and Bamboo Index (BI). The images were classified using supervised classification with the maximum likelihood classifier. We have used the CA-Markov model to look at how the LULC will change in the future (2035) based on matrices of current states. The results revealed that cropland, grassland, and built-up area increased between 1988 and 2019, while bamboo cover, agroforestry, wetland, and forestland decreased. Throughout the study period, cropland has remained the most prevalent LULC class, while bamboo cover has been the most affected. The projected result also showed that cropland increased dramatically, mostly at the cost of bamboo covers, wetland, and agroforestry, all of which have important ecological and socioeconomic values. To protect the valuable LULC classes from further degradation, conservation measures that take into account the region's economic, social, and ecological dynamics are urgently required. Furthermore, quantifying the impact of LULC changes on the region's socioeconomic and ecological values is suggested in the future to strengthen the knowledge base.