Analysis of urban spatiotemporal dynamics of Land use land cover and urban sprawl: A case of Dukem Town, Ethiopia

Abstract

Urban sprawl, mainly due to rapid urbanization, has become the primary problem in urban growth management, especially in cities in developing countries. Effective planning for its management requires a comprehensive understanding through precise analysis of the dynamics of urban growth and urban sprawl on both spatial and temporal scales. This study aims to analyze the spatiotemporal changes in land use land cover (LULC) due to urbanization and to assess urban sprawl in Dukem Town, one of the emerging towns of the country, from 2000 to 2021. Time series Landsat TM, ETM+, and OLI/TIRS datasets were utilized to prepare LULC maps of the study area for the years 2000, 2010, and 2021 using supervised classification techniques, and the spatiotemporal changes of LULC were investigated based on post-classification comparison. Using the spatial link between pre growth and newly built components, urban growth types were analyzed. Spatial metrics and Shannon’s entropy were used to determine the degree of urban sprawl. The results demonstrate that agricultural land and forest land were negatively impacted by urbanization-induced changes in land use and cover in Dukem Town. A substantial portion of agricultural and forest land were converted to built-up between 2000 and 2021, costing 1,161.58 and 83.97 hectares of land respectively. The spatiotemporal dynamics of urban sprawl have demonstrated incremental tendencies over the past 21 years, with built-up Class Areas (CA) increasing from 858.6 hectares in 2000 to 1,828.79 hectares in 2021. Furthermore, outlying, edge extension, and infilling types of urban growth totaling 534.24, 232.2, and 58.95 hectares of urban area, respectively, were found in the study region over the past 21 years. In conclusion, the study's results showed that the spatiotemporal dynamics of urban sprawl had accelerated over the past 21 years. The Town consequently experiences unprecedented, unanticipated, and rapid expansion, which will last for the ensuing decades. Urban planners must therefore plan ahead in order to execute an effective implementation strategy that will keep up with the rate of urban sprawl.