ANALYSIS OF AGRICULTURAL LAND USE DEPLETION IN KEFFI URBAN AREA, NASARARA STATE

Abstract

This paper identified the agricultural land use depletion in keffi urban area, ArcGIS software was used in time
series mapping of agricultural land use changes in keffi urban area between 1990 to 2020 to detect the gradual
changes in agricultural land uses that has taken place between these period in order to identifies the prospects and
challenges of agricultural land use depletion. In late 19th century up to later 2000 keffi was a small urban area
surrounded with vast agricultural land but these land are being taken yearly by urbanization there by putting at
risk the food production as well as the benefit of green areas within the urban area. The methodology of this
research entails the acquisition of satellite imageries of keffi urban area for 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2020
respectively from the google earth software; the imageries were imported to ArcGIS environment and georeferenced, digitized and overlaid individually and collectively over one another in order to detect gradual
depletion or changes on agricultural land uses. The result of the study shows that in 1990 the agricultural land use
was 12.22 km2 after the period of ten years in 2000 the agricultural land uses reduced to 10.8 km2 also in year
2010 agricultural land use declined to 8.07 km2 however in the year 2020 agricultural land uses was 7,30 km2 .
The result of the work show that rapid increase in agricultural land use depletion was between 2000 and 2010, it is
also observed that the rapid increase in build-up area was between 2000 to 2010 which resulted to the rapid
agricultural land used depletion between these years. At the end of this research recommendation such as
preparation of master plan to include agricultural land uses in the plan were made alongside others in order to
achieve an agriculturally sustainable urban area.