Community-based assessment of the dynamics of urban landscape characteristics and ecosystem services in the rainforest and guinea savanna ecoregions of Nigeria.

Understanding the dynamics of urban landscapes and their impacts on ecological well-being is crucial for developing sustainable urban management strategies in times of rapid urbanisation. This study assesses the nature and drivers of the changing urban landscape and ecosystem services in cities located in the rainforest (Akure and Owerri) and guinea savannah (Makurdi and Minna) of Nigeria using a combination of remote sensing and socioeconomic techniques. Landsat 8 datasets provided spatial patterns of the normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) and normalised difference built-up index (NDBI). A household survey involving the administration of a semi-structured questionnaire to 1552 participants was conducted. Diminishing NDVI and increasing NDBI were observed due to the rising trend of urban expansion, corroborating the perception of over 54% of the respondents who noted a decline in landscape ecological health. Residential expansion, agricultural practices, transport and infrastructural development, and fuelwood production were recognised as the principal drivers of landscape changes. Climate variability/change reportedly makes a 28.5%-34.4% (Negelkerke R2) contribution to the changing status of natural landscapes in Akure and Makurdi as modelled by multinomial logistic regression, while population growth/in-migration and economic activities reportedly account for 19.9%-36.3% in Owerri and Minna. Consequently, ecosystem services were perceived to have declined in their potential to regulate air and water pollution, reduce soil erosion and flooding, and mitigate urban heat stress, with a corresponding reduction in access to social services. We recommend that urban residents be integrated into management policies geared towards effectively developing and enforcing urban planning regulations, promoting urban afforestation, and establishing sustainable waste management systems.

Land use/land cover change and land surface temperature of Ibadan and environs, Nigeria.

Rapid urbanization is having a considerable impact on various aspects of living, thereby altering the biophysical environment. This study adopted the use of remote sensing technique and geographical information system (GIS) to analyse the relationship between changing land use/land cover and land surface temperature in a rapidly urbanizing tropical city of Ibadan between 1984 and 2019. Landsat series TM, ETM+, and OLI satellite imageries of Ibadan region city for 1984, 2002, and 2019, respectively, were obtained from the US Geological Survey (USGS) Landsat series of Earth Observation satellites accessible on the Google earth engine (GEE) platform. Supervised classification was done using a random forest (RF) machine learning classifier in the GEE platform. Surface emissivity maps were obtained from the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) thresholds method and land cover information. The surface emissivity based on NDVI classes was used to retrieve land surface temperature (LST). The results showed an increase in urban cover from 341.72 km2 in 1984 to 520.58 km2 in 2019 with an average increase in land surface temperature from 17 °C to 38 °C, respectively. Temperature sampling in the north-south and west-east transect revealed that highly urbanized areas located at the city centre of Ibadan have the highest LST of about 38 °C. It dissipates to about 19 °C at the suburb that is less built up. A significant negative relationship exists between the health condition of vegetation (NDVI) and LST with a correlation coefficient of r = - 0.95. The study confirms the potential application of GIS and remote sensing for detecting urban growth as well as relates growth impact to LST, thereby suggesting that fitting strategies will be important for the sustainable management of the urban areas.