ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Remote Sens.
Sec. Land Cover and Land Use Change
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frsen.2025.1594331
Remote Sensing-Based Assessment of Four Decades of Land Use/Land Cover Change in the Sigi River Watershed, East Usambara Mountains, Tanzania
Provisionally accepted
- 1Institute of Soil Science and Site Ecology, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Technische Universität Dresden, 01737 Tharandt, Dresden, Germany
- 2Institute for Integrated Management of Material Fluxes and of Resources, United Nations University, Dresden, Germany
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Agricultural expansion and intensification have driven substantial land use/land cover (LULC) changes globally, often leading to a significant decline in ecosystem servicesresulting in the degradation of ecosystem services. These changes have caused a drastic reduction in ecosystem services. Understanding the spatial and temporal patterns of LULC change in relation to topographic attributes is essential for effective watershed management, as it provides insights into landscape heterogeneity and supports evidence-based conservation planning. This study analyzed LULC dynamics from 1983 to 2022 in the Sigi River catchment (874 km 2 ) in the East Usambara Mountains, a biodiversity hotspot and critical water source in northeastern Tanzania. Multi-temporal Landsat satellite images were classified using the Random Forest algorithm to assess LULC transitions across elevation and slope gradients. The results revealed marked variations in LULC change across topographic zones. The foothill and escarpment areas experienced extensive deforestation and the rapid expansion of small-scale cultivation, whereas upland areas exhibited relatively lower levels of change, primarily transitioning from forest to spice agroforestry. These spatial patterns reflect the influence of population pressure, socio-economic transformations, government land policies, and the establishment of protected areas in the uplands. Slope steepness further modulated LULC dynamics, with steeper slopes across all elevations showing notable forest loss, while gentler slopes may have undergone earlier land conversion, preceding the study period. The study underscores the importance of integrating topographic attributes into LULC assessments to better understand landscape transformation processes and support sustainable land-use planning and watershed management.
Keywords: Topographic attributes, Land use/land cover (LULC), deforestation, Random Forest classification, Small-scale cultivation, spatiotemporal analysis
Received: 15 Mar 2025; Accepted: 28 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chidodo, Zhang, Zarei and Feger. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Simon Chidodo, Institute of Soil Science and Site Ecology, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Technische Universität Dresden, 01737 Tharandt, Dresden, Germany
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