ASSESSMENT OF SPATIO-TEMPORAL DYNAMICS OF URBAN SPRAWL IN KADUNA METROPOLIS, NIGERIA.

Yakubu, B.M.*, Usman. A.K. and Jacob, R.J.

The study assessed urban sprawl in Kaduna metropolis. Remote sensing and GIS in conjunction with Shannon entropy were used to compute the intensity of urban sprawl in the metropolis. Landsat data for 1990, 2002 and 2014 was acquired for land use land cover classification using maximum likelihood algorithm. Findings from the land use land cover classification revealed that built up areas in Kaduna metropolis have increased drastically from 6073.9 hectares in 1990 to 12423.6 hectares in 2014. Findings from Shannon entropy analysis of the metropolis indicated that the sprawling has increased from 3.234 in 1990 to 3.361 in 2014. This research can assist Local Government authorities in monitoring the growth of built up areas and in drafting measures and policies to address the effects of urban sprawl.

Key words: Urban sprawl, Image classification, Shannon’s entropy, Land use-Land cover.