DETECTING EXPANSION OF EUCALYPTUS PLANTATION AND ITS IMPACT USING GIS AND REMOTE SENSING: THE CASE OF MECHA WOREDA, AMHARA REGION, ETHIOPIA

GASHAW, MOLLA

dc.contributor.author	GASHAW, MOLLA
dc.date.accessioned	2018-06-22T04:43:16Z
dc.date.available	2018-06-22T04:43:16Z
dc.date.issued	2018-06-21
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/8722
dc.description.abstract	Eucalyptus plantation has rapidlyreplacing productive land for cereal cropsin Mecha woreda. The study was intended to detect change inEucalyptusplantationand identify the main drivers which motivate farmers to plant Eucalyptus tree in Mecha woreda of Amhara region. For the identification of land use/ land cover change, Landsat imagery of 1985, 2000 and 2015 wereused.Toidentifying the main drivers of expansion of Eucalyptus plantation, the study utilized household questionnaire.120 households were selectedfromhree kebeles. The analysis of landsat imagery was done through preprocessing, classification, accuracy assessment and change detection using ArcGIS and ERDAS imagine software.The major land use classes identified in the study area were forest, Eucalyptus plantation, grassland, built up, cultivated/ crop land and water body. Eucalyptus plantation in the study area increased from 347.71 ha to1756.61 ha to12756.9 ha in 1985, 2000 and 2015 respectively. An increment of thisland use was at the expense ofmainly grass land and crop/cultivated land uses. In the first period of the study (1985-2000) 671.2 ha and 807.7 ha of crop and grass land was converted to Eucalyptus respectively. During the second period (2000-2015),though these two landuses were dramatically increased, the conversion of crop land (7540.5ha) was much greater than grass land(3299.94ha) than the first period. In the same way in the overall period of the study the conversion of these two land use types were strongly increased to 8655.39ha and 3440.97ha, crop and grass land respectively. There are different pushing factors for farmers to convert their land to Eucalyptus plantation. From these 45.8 % of the respondent replied that the growing of Eucalyptus because of it better income generation than other land use products, 27.5% of the respondent responded Eucalyptusplanteddue to its negative impact on productivity of adjacent crop land and the other 18.3 % of the respondents replied that they converted their land to Eucalyptusbecause its low production cost than other land uses. Therefore, measures should be taken by the government through in formulating land use policies to control this rapid expansion of Eucalyptus plantation.	en_US
dc.language.iso	en	en_US
dc.title	DETECTING EXPANSION OF EUCALYPTUS PLANTATION AND ITS IMPACT USING GIS AND REMOTE SENSING: THE CASE OF MECHA WOREDA, AMHARA REGION, ETHIOPIA	en_US
dc.type	Thesis	en_US