Assessing The Degradation of Agricultural Land in Per-Urban Area of Kuje, Abuja Nigeria

Name of Author : 1Abakpa David Ibrahim

Abstract: Urban expansion has extended to forest and agricultural land as population and consumption of resources are placing high demand on agriculture and natural resources. This study was conducted to highlight some of the environmental degradation in the study area. Images of 1998, 2008 and 2018 were employed to observe the land conversion and maximum likelihood classifier algorithm of ilwis 3.3 software was used to perform the supervised classification, while questionnaires where used to collect data on the people’s opinions, analysis was done using frequency tables and percentages. It was discovered that built up land claim most of the agricultural land while bare land has also increased as was observed in the land use/land cover change analyses. On the people perception, 69% of the respondents have observed that fuel wood harvesting, clearing of land for agriculture, overgrazing deforestation and increase in socioeconomic activities in the study area have caused flooding, erosion, biodiversity loss and soil quality loss.

Keywords : Agricultural Land, Environmental disaster, Kuje, Urban Expansion, GIS

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