Land use and Land cover Pattern of Stubbs Creek, Akwa Ibom State between 1986 and 2019 using Geospatial Techniques

This study assessed the land use/land cover patterns in Stubbs Creek, Akwa Ibom, Nigeria from 1986 to 2019. The study used Landsat imageries of 1986, 2000 and 2019 to determine the spatial extent, trend and percentage of changes of different land use/land cover in the study area. Supervised classification using maximum likelihood algorithm was used to classify the imageries into different major land use/land cover in Arc GIS 10.6. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. The results indicated that between 1986 and 2019, water bodies, flood plain/riparian/mangrove and thick vegetation land use types reduced by 43.87%, 70.60%, and 93.19% respectively. On the other hand, built-up area and Nypafructicans/Sparse Vegetation increased by 1425.03%, and 1855.25% respectively. The study concluded that majority of Stubbs Creek is presently dominated by Nypafructicans and human activities. It is therefore recommended that the increase in built up area representing urban growth has enormous implication on the ecosystem balance of the study area; thus there is therefore the need to enact laws against forest encroachment and expansion so as to protect the ecosystem; and there is need for periodical monitoring of the vegetation status in the Stubbs Creek, Akwa Ibom State for sustainable forest resource management and biodiversity in the entire study area to mitigate the associated risk of global climate change.