KARI-NCST - Mapping and Monitoring Land Cover Changes in Oroba-Kibos Using GIS, July 2000

Abstract

Land cover links different aspects of the physical and human environment in addition to driving the global environmental changes. It plays a fundamental role in environmental processes and ecosystems functions and services such as the cycling of water, energy and carbon, which in turn affects the concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide and magnitude of greenhouse effect. Land cover, also, reflects the availability of ecosystem goods and services such as food, fuel, timber, fibre and biodiversity. Thus, alterations in land cover status have significant implications at the global, regional and local scales ranging from changes in ecosystem functions, surface-atmosphere energy fluxes, climate, livelihoods and socio-economic processes to loss of soil and biodiversity. Due to this, land cover changes have assumed global importance and, a profound appreciation of their interactions with the global earth systems requires quantitative information on what changes occur, where and when they occur, the rates at which they occur, as well as, the driving forces and processes behind the changes.