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ABSTRACT
Urbanization is a significant global phenomenon that has far-reaching impacts on the environment, including changes in land cover. This research evaluates the impact of urbanization on land cover in Benin City, Nigeria using satellite imagery and GIS analysis, the study assesses changes in land use and vegetation cover in the city over a period of three decades as this would help identify changes in land use that may threaten valuable ecosystems and biodiversity and also inform conservation and management strategies. This study was done by obtaining cloudless satellite imageries from United States Geological Survey at different points in time (1990, 1999, 2009 and 2019) and the Secure Copy Protocol plugin on Quantum Geographic Information System (QGIS) was employed to classify these images using the supervised classification method. ROIs were created and assessed, then classes (Water bodies, Built Up areas and Vegetation) were assigned to them so as to be able to properly represent them for the study and a change detection was done for the years to get a proper detailed result to show the effect of Urbanization in Benin City and its Environs under the Land Cover Classes employed in this study. The noticeable changes were tabulated, and the percentage differences were then calculated. It was noted that vegetation has significantly reduced over time, from 819.91mi 2 in 1990 to 213.73mi 2 in 2019 which represents a 73.93% reduction and built up areas significantly increased over time, from 93.75mi 2 in 1990 to 700.01mi 2 in 2019 which represents a 646.6% increase. This clearly shows that Benin City has been significantly affected by Urbanization and as this city gets more urbanized over time, the natural areas are converted to built up areas so as to accommodate the needs of a growing population. It was also recommended that Sustainable Development Practices are promoted, Use of Green Infrastructure are encouraged and The Land Use Land Cover Data are monitored.
