Spatial-Temporal Changes of Limoto Wetland Land Use/Cover Before, During and After Restoration Activities in Eastern Uganda

Purpose: Limoto Wetland is an arm of the Mpologoma wetland system in the Kyoga basin and is a vital ecosystem that supports rural livelihoods through the provision of various ecological goods and services. However, this ecosystem has been undergoing rapid degradation arising from competing land uses particularly paddy rice growing. In turn, this led to reduced capacity of the wetland to provide ecosystem services, thereby reducing the resilience of both the ecosystem and the livelihoods of adjacent communities. Interventions through a restoration program that introduced alternative livelihood options were instituted. It's important to document these changes to obtain insights that can aid decision-making for effective restoration and conservation. This study, therefore, sought to examine the spatial-temporal changes in Limoto wetland land use/cover transitions for the years 2015, 2020, and 2022. Methodology: To quantify the wetland changes, remotely sensed imageries for 2015, 2020, and 2022 were utilized in classifying land use and land cover dynamics on Limoto Wetland through the Maximum Likelihood algorithm. A total of 500 points were collected from different land use/cover types and used as reference points to develop the image error matrices. Overall accuracy, producer's and user's accuracies as well as Kappa statistics were generated from the error matrices. A Kappa test was carried out to measure the extent of classification accuracy; the Kappa coefficient, K, being a coefficient of agreement. It reflects the difference between the actual agreement of classification with reference data and the agreement expected by chance. Findings: Results generally showed that five years after the restoration program (2020), Limoto wetlands regained over 50% of previously converted wetlands to farming. Papyrus coverage also more than doubled from 3.4% to 11.35% of the total wetland coverage. Farms degraded over the past years (1986-2019). However, in 2022, wetland coverage declined drastically as farming took up more than half of the coverage (55%) land, and built-up areas also increased. These changes between 2015-2020 were majorly driven by the introduction of alternative livelihood options which vacated communities from the wetland. Recommendation: The changes after 2020 were due to the unsustainability of the livelihood options and the effects of the Covid-19 lockdown which rendered only farming as the socio-economic activity, coupled with movement restrictions that curtailed monitoring and control of activities in wetlands by enforcers. The study recommends community-tailored, tenable, and sustainable alternative livelihood options to influence community-led wetland restoration and conservation to curb the continuous loss of this wetland.