Predictive modeling of desertification in Jibia Local Government Area of Katsina State, Nigeria

This study examines desertification in Jibia Local Government Area of Katsina State, Nigeria. Landsat TM 1990, Landsat ETM plus 2000 and Landsat 8 of 2015 with spatial resolutions of 15 and 30 m were used to compute quantitative area coverage via a supervised classification scheme in ERDAS IMAGINE 9.2. An accuracy assessment was undertaken to ascertain the accuracy level of the classification in which none of the images had an accuracy level of below 90% and a kappa coefficient of below 0.87. Cellular automata markov chain analysis model within IDRISI Kilimanjaro software was used to predict changes in desertification process up to year 2030. Results on classified satellite imageries showed a considerable decrease in vegetation and an increase in desertification. Between the years 1990 and 2000 (10 years) about 17.8% of the total study area was affected by desertification, that means approximately 1.8% of the area was affected yearly. However, between 2000 and 2015 the rate increased where more than 100% of the total land area was affected at the rate of 8.0% annually. Between 1990 and 2015, total land area affected by desertification amounted to 277.4 sqkm. Results on prediction indicated desertification increase from 450.84 sqkm in 2015 to 485.25 sqkm of the total land area to be engulfed by desertification by the year 2030.& COPY; 2020 National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ncnd/4.0/).