Using GIS to Assess Sustainable Land Management; A case of Manyatta B, an Informal Settlement in Kisumu, Kenya

Abstract

Sustainable land management is a knowledge based mechanism through which land is managed to ensure that land as a resource is optimally utilized taking into consideration the current users and users while ensuring that the future generations are taken into consideration. In this research, the focus was on sustainable land management in the informal to help us understand the practices of managing land developments, the changes in land use land cover and how sustainable they are. The use of Geospatial Information Science and Remote Sensing has been used to help in monitoring and evaluating the land use land cover change as well as assess the sustainability of these changes with respect to the factors that have contributed to these changes. The study area for this research was Manyatta B, an informal settlement with Kisumu County Kenya. Landsat satellite imageries of three different time periods, 2000, 2010 and 2020 were acquired by United States Geological Survey (USGS) earth explorer site and quantify the changes in the study area from 2000 to 2020 over a period of 20 years. Supervised classification methodology was employed using maximum likelihood technique in ArcGIS Desktop 10.2.2 Software. The images of the study area were categorized into four different classes namely vegetation, trees, bare land, and built-up areas. The results indicate that during the last two decades, built-up land had been increasing by 0.85% annually over the years; there was no relative average change in tree cover while bare land and vegetation have decreased by 0.65% and 0.3% respectively. Data from the questionnaires showed that these changes have been influenced by different factors like a various in the weather patterns, localization of development through the County government and population increase.