Abstract

Dense vegetation cover is significantly ceding to sparse and bare land surfaces. The study was embarked upon to identify the spatio-temporal trends in vegetation cover indexes and to analyze the causes of changes. The scope is limited to Hong Local Government Area of Adamawa State, Nigeria. The time frame of the study covers from 1976 to 2009 with sample years of 1976, 1987, 1998 and 2009. The study focused on spatio-temporal change detection of bare, dense and sparse vegetation covers. Data on vegetation covers were generated from landsat images of 1976, 1987, 1998 and 2009. Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing techniques were adopted to analyze the data. Comparison of vegetation cover situation was adopted to determine the thriving state of vegetation cover from 1976 to 2009. The result indicates that dense vegetation cover decreased by 10.25% while sparse and bare surfaces increased by 8.65% and 1.60% accordingly. These changes were attributed to increase in population from 112,845 in 1976 to 170,452 in 2009 manifested by increase in arable farming, bush burning, vegetal resources harvesting and infrastructural development. The result implies with increase in human activities in the area will result in loss of more vegetation cover. It is recommended that inhabitants should embark on agro-vegetation on tree species that are adapted to the environment and have proved important to populace as sources of fuelwood should be cultivated by farmers on the bare lands.