EXPLORINGLANDUSEANDLANDCOVERCHANGEINTHE MININGAREASOFWAEASTDISTRICT, GHANAUSING SATELLITEIMAGERY

Abstract

Satelliteimageryhasbeenwidelyusedtomonitortheextentofenvironmentalchangeinbothmineand postmineareas.ThisstudyusesRemotesensingandGeographicalInformationSystemtechniquesfortheassessment of land use/land cover dynamics of mine related areas in Wa East District of Ghana. Landsat satellite imageriesofthreedifferenttimeperiods,i.e.,1991,2000and 2014wereusedtoquantifythelanduse/coverchangesin thearea.SupervisedClassificationusingMaximumLikelihoodTechniqueinERDASwasutilized.Theimageswere categorized into five different classes: Open Savannah, ClosedSavannah, BareAreas,Settlement andWater.Imagedifferencingmethodofchangedetectionwasusedto investigate the changes. Normalized Differential VegetativeIndexvalueswereusedtocorrelatethestateofhealthy vegetation.Theimagedifferencingshowedapositivecorrelation to the changes in the Land use and Land cover classes. NDVI values reduced from 0.48 to 0.11. The land use change matrix also showed conversion of savannah areas into bare ground and settlement. Open and close savannah reduced from 50.80% to 36.5% and 27.80% to 22.67% respectively whiles bare land and settlement increased. Overall accuracy of classified 2014 image and kappa statistics was 83.20% and 0.761 respectively. The studyrevealedthedecliningnatureofthevegetationand thesignificanceofusingsatelliteimagery.AhigherresolutionsatelliteImageryishoweverneededtosatisfactorily delineatemineareasfromotherbareareasinsuchSavannahzones.