Land-use and land-cover change in the lowlands of Bale Zone, Ethiopia: its driving factors and impacts of rangeland dynamics in livestock mobility

Rangeland in Bale lowlands has been seriously degraded due to human-induced problems and natural factors. The study was conducted to analyze LULC change and its deriving factors and evaluate the impacts of rangeland dynamics on livestock mobility in Bale lowlands from 1990–2020. Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) 1990, Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM +) 2000, and Operational Land Imager (OLI) 2014 and 2020 were chosen to derive LULC classes using maximum likelihood image classifier. Besides, a household survey was used to understand the major causes of LULC change, as well as the impacts of rangeland dynamics on livestock mobility. The accuracy reports of classified LULC classes of the study were 88.2% (1990), 89.19% (2000), 93.8% (2014), and 95.2% (2020). The result of the study revealed that there was extreme bush encroachment (545.54%), expansion of settlement (19,166%), and farmland (171.27%) while forest cover has slightly decreased (−8.76%) from 1990 to 2020. On the other hand, shrubland (−72.74%) and grassland (−59.2%) have extremely declined. During the study period, rangeland of Bale lowlands was degraded with annual rate of −0.8%. The study also revealed that expansion of farmland, settlement, communal land, and bush encroachment was the main driving factors for LULC change in Bale lowlands. Bale pastoralists are vulnerable to the death of their livestock, and they need to travel long distances because of rapid rangeland degradation. Therefore, suitable land-use and management policies for pastoral communities should be formulated and implemented so as to permanently mitigate the problem.