Spatiotemporal Variation of Land Use Pattern and Land Cover Changes in Gidan Kwano Watershed Area in North Central Nigeria

Land Management Systems (LMS) are institutional frameworks complex by the tasks they must achieve, national, cultural, political, and judicial settings and technology. The urbanisation process in Nigeria has increased since the 1960s because of the crude oil boom era and other government-backed industrial initiatives and investments. This study employed the use of both primary and secondary sources of data. Preliminary data comprise methods of land use, types of agricultural activities carried out and the process of working on the land by the farmers within a 10 km radius. The secondary data involved the interactive digital and visual techniques of the Geographical Information system for five seasons, with each having a ten-year interval span within 1975 to 2015. Statistical analysis was carried out with SPSS 2013 and XLSTAT 2015. Five land use and land cover types were observed within the Gidan Kwano watershed, which includes wetlands (WL), water bodies (WB), bare grounds (BG), vegetation (VG), and settlements (SL). The most prevalent landform in the study area during the 1975 period was the vegetative area which was 50% of the total landmass. Thus, the vegetation (VG) covered half of the Gidan Kwano watershed. However, the vegetative area decreased substantially during the study period of 1975 to 2015. It was observed that the vegetation (VG) within the study area had the highest percentage of coverage, of 34%. During the study period, a significant decrease was observed in the WL, WB and VG areas. It was also concluded that due to the built-up places, the infiltration of surface runoff from rainwater would be drastically reduced as most of the sections are paved for construction activities while a section of the study area is covered with rock outcrops and farmlands.