Analysis of Spatio-temporal urban expansion of Bure town since 1989, Northwest Ethiopia

Abstract

Bure town has characterized by having different landscape arrangement. After three decades, there areal coverage of the town expand in the all direction than ever before and the physical appearance of the town is gradually changed. Thus, analyze the expansion of the town is the key consideration of the study. To complete this study, 1989 and 2019 SPOT images were used .The changes happened in the town was analyzed using ERDAS IMAGINE 2015 and arc map 10.5. Thus, four classes are identified. In 1989 the built-up area covered an area of 7.25 km2 but it again increased in to 14.81 km2 in 2019. In contrast, the forest, grasslands and farmland covered an area of 2.66 km2, 3.35 km2 and 7.28 km2 in 1989 respectively but they decreased in to 1.14 km2, 2.44 km2 and 2.15 km2 in 2019 respectively. As a result, in the period comparisons, the built-up areas are increased by 7.56km2 with rate of 0.25km2 per year. In contrast, the grasslands, forest and farmlands are decreased by 0.91 km2, 1.52 km2 and 5.13 km2 respectively with rate change of 0.03 km2, 0.05 km2 and 0.17 km2 per year respectively. Therefore, the rapid expansion of the town causes many problems, such as infrastructure planning, uncontrolled urban sprawl at the expense of agricultural lands. Hence, planners and resource managers need a reliable mechanism to assess the consequences of Bure town horizontal expansion quickly and effectively.