Historical and projected land-use / land cover changes of the Welmel River Watershed, Genale Dawa Basin, Ethiopia

Human activities on land have grown significantly changing the entire landscape, while most of the changes have occurred in the tropics. The change has become a serious environmental concern at the local, regional and global scales. The intensity, speed, and degree of land use / land cover (LULC) changes are nowadays quicker compared to the past because of the development of society. Moreover, the rapid increase in population resulted in disturbing a large number of landscapes on the Earth. The main objective of this study was to detect historical (1990-2020) and predicted (2020-2050) LULC changes in the Welmel River Watershed, which is located in the Genale-Dawa Basin, South Eastern Ethiopia. The dataset of 1990, 2005, and 2020 was generated from Landsat 5, Landsat 7 and Landsat 8 respectively to determine the historical LULC map. The result of this study revealed that agriculture/ settlement increased by 6.85 km2 ∙y-1, while forestland declined by 9.16 km2 ∙y-1 over the last 31 years between 1990 and 2020. In the coming 31 years (by 2050), if the existing trend of the LULC change continues, agriculture/settlement land is expected to increase from 290.64 km2 in 2020 to 492.51 km 2 in 2050 at the rate of 6.73 km2 ∙y-1, while forestland is expected to shrink from 690.48 km2 in 2020 to 427.01 km2 in 2050 by a rate of 8.78 km2 ∙y-1.