Assessment of Land-Use and Land-Cover Changes in Akure Forest Reserve, Ondo State, Nigeria

ABSTRACT The study involved assessment of the changes in land use/cover and simulation of forest cover in Akure Forest Reserve between 1984 and 2025. Landsat imageries of 1984 and 1991 (TM) and 2002, 2014 and 2025 (OLI/TC) were procured from the United States Geological Survey (USGS), Earth Resources Observation and Science Centre (EROS). The ground-truth data were collected to improve the classifications of the imageries, using handheld GPS receiver. In order to analyse the past and present land-use and land-cover conditions in the area, the acquired images were pre-processed and analysed in ArcGIS 10.8. An Iso-cluster (unsupervised) classification technique was used. Evaluations of changes that occurred between 1984 and 2025 were also conducted. Confusion matrix and other accuracy statistics, such as Kappa's coefficient, were used to assess the classification accuracy. The result revealed five main land-use/cover types in the area, viz.: bareland, forest plantation, forest, water bodies and farm/fallowland. The result showed that forest and water bodies declined by 284.6 ha (-7.8%) and 280.4 (-139.3) at an annual rates of 0.2% and 0.9%, respectively, between 1984 and 2024. On the other hand, bareland, forest plantation and farm/fallowland increased by 5.8 ha (0.3%), 174.0 ha (8.3%) and 385.2 ha (22.1%), at annual rates of 0.01%, 0.7%, and 6.3%, respectively. Illegal logging, over-exploitation of non-timber forest products and forest land conversion to agriculture were the major drivers of the decline in forest cover. The result of simulation also indicated declining trends in forest cover, water bodies, while farm/fallow and bareland were projected to increase in the near future. Should this trend continue, it might result in serious degradation. Therefore, improved land-use management, aggressive forest restoration and environmental conservation initiatives are recommended.