Urban Expansion and Loss of Agricultural Land: a GIS based study of Kiambu County
Urbanization leads to the outward expansion of cities and results in changes in land use and the dramatic effects are very clear in peri-urban areas. A key challenge of the urbanization process is the rapid conversion of prime agricultural land to urban land use (residential, industrial, and infrastructural construction) in the urban periphery. The present study attempts to understand the spatiotemporal extent of urban expansion and its implications on land use, by using remote sensing and GIS tools to detect land use/cover changes in a peri-urban setting over 28 years. Land use and land cover (lulc) maps were derived from Multispectral images of 1986, 2002 and 2014 from Landsat Thematic Mapper, Enhanced Thematic Mapper and Landsat 8. The study revealed a significant change of land-use/cover between 1986 and 2014 with the area experiencing a rapid increase in urbanization (41.6 %), forest decreased by (10.3 %), and a decrease in bare land (1.8 %), water (0.22 %) and agricultural area ...