Assessment of Land Cover Change Due to Stone Quarrying in Narok Town Ward

Abstract

Land cover change is described as the dynamic change in the terrestrial surface of the earth induced by human activities. Changes in land cover include urbanization, agricultural activities, and increased mining activities/quarrying activities which result in alteration of initial land surface status. Quarrying operations have been reported to cause alteration in vegetation cover and landscape, open cast methods used in stone mining lead to the destruction of land resources including denudation of vegetation cover, loss of soil fertility and soil erosion. Remote sensing and Geographical Information System (GIS) techniques were used to assess land cover changes due to stone mining in the study area. Satellite images covering the study area were downloaded from United States Geographical (USGS) Earth Explorer for the four epochs 1985, 1995, 2010 and 2022 for analysis. Spatial analysis of land cover changes was conducted by processing and analysis of remotely sensed images from Landsat and Sentinel 2 satellite data. Supervised classification was performed on the images into vegetation and non-vegetation cover classes using environmental visualization software, version 5.3. Findings were presented descriptively in tables, charts, graphs and textual forms. The study found that the non-vegetation cover class had intensified by 18.70% between the years 1985 and 1995. There was an increase in vegetation cover class between the years 1995 and 2010 by 37.81 %. Between the year 2010 and 2022, vegetation cover was reduced by 18.24 %. The study concluded that quarrying activities have led to reduced land cover over time resulting in negative environmental outcomes such as land degradation and reduced aesthetic value in the study area.