Land Use Changes in the Adjoining Rural Land of Maiduguri Between 1961- 2002: Trends and Implications in Environmental Management in Borno State, Nigeria

This study aimed at examining the trends in land use changes in Maiduguri urban area between 1961 and 2002 and the implications of these in environmental management. These were based on the use of GIS and Remote sensing techniques. Remote sensing data that were made available for this study include black and white aerial photographs of 1961 and 1972 at scale of 1:10,000 and 1:25,000 respectively and SPOT (panchromatic) at a scale of 1:40,000 with 10m resolution. These were interpreted to generate the land use maps for 1961 and 1972, and 1990. The land use map for 1990 on which the field observation of land use changes between 1990 and 2002 was used as the base data. The four land use maps were then digitalized and analyzed in a GIS environment using ILWIS 3.0 and ARCINFO 3.8. The total land area delimited in the study area within which changes were monitored over the period was 13,389 hectares. The study revealed among others that the land use changes trend in the city showed that Maiduguri grew at a fast rate. Consequently, it was concluded that such a high growth in a semi-arid environment where water supply is grossly inadequate, poses a lot of challenges in urban management. Therefore, there is a need to put in place procedures for regular acquisition of remotely sensed data that will make it possible to track the changes happening to land in the urban areas in Nigeria.