Abstract:
Land use/land cover change is a complex phenomenon that has serious environmental, economic
and social impacts on rural livelihoods. As such, it is important to investigate and understand the
causes which play major roles in land use change and its impacts on livelihood of the
communities. This study was intended to investigate the impacts of land use/land cover change on
the income of the communities in Dedo woreda. The study involved both satellite remote sensing
and socio economic data to achieve its objective. For mapping land use/land cover, three time
series satellite images: thematic mapper (TM), enhanced thematic mapper plus (ETM+) and
operational land imager (OLI) were used for the years 1984, 2000, and 2017 respectively. Five
land use land cover classes namely; cultivation land, dense forest, light vegetation, grazing land,
and settlement area were clearly identified for the study. Supervised image classification method
has been employed using maximum likelihood classification method using ERDAS 2015 Software.
Additionally, socio-economic assessment was conducted by using questionnaires, key informant
interview and focus group discussion to investigate the driving forces of land use/land cover
change and its impact on livelihood of the communities. Survey questionnaire was administered
for 110 systematic random sampling selected households. Twelve participants were selected for
focus group discussions and ten respondents for key informant interview. The land use trend
analysis results revealed that during the last three decades, cultivation and settlement lands have
increased by 15.7% and 0.34%, while dense forest, light vegetation and grazing lands have
decreased by 9.2%, 4.95% and 1.9%, respectively. In different extents, dense forest, light
vegetation and grazing land were converted to cultivation and settlement land. As the study
explored from socio-economic data, population growth, expansion of agricultural land,
intensified timber harvesting and construction wood, Ineffective natural resource conservation
policy enforcement and change in livelihood mechanism were the main causes of land use/land
cover change in the woreda. Whereas Land degradation, soil erosion, forest degradation and
climate change are identified as the main effects/ products of land use/land cover changes that
affect the crop production and income of local communities. Therefore to minimize the effects of
land use land cover change, effective and strong natural resource management and utilization
policy have to be implemented by woreda’s forest and natural resource conservation office with
the participation of local communities and the regional government to insure the sustainability of
proper utilization and use of natural resources.