Land Use Change Detection Across River Nanyuki Catchment Using Envi And CLASlite Programs

Abstract

Land use change is a significant factor in environmental conservation and climate change which may be positive or negative depending on how it occurred. It aimed at examining the land use changes that took place across the catchment from 1984 to date. Landsat images of the area were downloaded from USGS database and processed using CLASlite, a forest monitoring application developed by Carnegie Institute for Science (CIS) and ENVI software for land use classification and change detection. Over the study period, the area was observed to have experienced different modifications, most notable one being deforestation in the upper part of the catchment where Mount Kenya Forest extended. Most of the deforestation was understood to have taken place in the 1980s and 1990s with 2.5% forest depletion between 1984
and 1995. That may be attributed to illegal logging because up to 60% of the lost forest area during the period was taken by uncultivated land.