Land Use and Land Cover Change of Ghana

Land use and cover change (LUCC) is a central component in current strategies for managing natural resources and monitoring environmental change. In this paper, we used maximum likelihood classification algorithm to obtain the supervised land use and cover classification. Four major land use and cover classes are identified and mapped from 2000 to 2015. The changes of land use and cover using Landsat images of the study area were analyzed. The results showed that: From 2005 to 2015, closed forest has increased and the annual rate of change was (+)3.3%. Open forest has an annual rate of change of (+)1.21%. Water bodies had an annual rate of change of (+)0.81%. While the settlements and bare lands had a decrease of 52.93 km
²
and the annual rate of change was (-)5.3%.