Application of GIS and Remote Sensing in Monitoring Effects of Urban Sprawl in Urban Kenya:
A case study of Eldoret Municipality
Abstract
Urban sprawl is defined as unsustainable and uncoordinated growth. This study aims at detecting land use and land cover changes within Eldoret municipality over 25 years using Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) imagery of 30m spatial resolution at 7-year intervals. GIS and remote sensing-based methodology has been adopted in supervised classification of satellite images into four classes; Built up, Bare land, Vegetation and farmlands. Post classification; Change detection analysis determined quantity and tendency of transition from one land cover class to another. The results were subjected to zonal statistics to determine nature, and extent of sprawl. The change analysis revealed general trend of increasing built-up areas from 5.382Km² in 1995 and 27.57 Km² in 2017. Depletion of green spaces is demonstrated by decrease in vegetation from 9.72% coverage in 1995 to 2.66% coverage in 2017. Eldoret municipality experienced negative growth in built environment in 2002-2009 transition due to Post Election Violence (PEV) and speculation of further unrest while there was great shrinkage of green spaces in 2009-2017 contributed by better political environment in 2013 as well as devolution. Zonal statistics analysis revealed uncoordinated development in defined land use zones. This study concludes that urban sprawl is a phenomenon that will persist in Eldoret town if left unchecked. As a result, this study recommends that; enforcement of policy framework on 0.5Acres minimum land holding size within municipality, restriction of change of user, set standard road width to 9m on residential and 15m on agricultural zones. Development of municipality’s strategic plans and follow up to implementation. This study greatly highlights efficiency of Geographic Information Science (GIS) and Remote Sensing in detecting, monitoring and modelling urban expansion or sprawl and its drivers.
