Dynamics of land use changes in the municipality of Kangala in Burkina Faso

Changes in land use and land cover are one of the indicators of the biophysical state of the environment. These are fundamental variables for mapping inventories and monitoring of environmental phenomena. The present study aims to analyze the spatio-temporal dynamics of land-use changes between 1990 and 2018 in the municipality of Kangala. To do this, the 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2018 Landsat images were used. The methodology used combines both socio-economic survey data and digital processing of satellite images. For class discrimination, the supervised classification approach was performed with the maximum likelihood algorithm. The transition matrix highlighted the changes in the land use classes. Field areas increased from 18.57% in 1990 to 22.18% in 2018. Orchards almost tripled in size. From 10.68% in 1990 they reach 35.32% in 2018. Riparian vegetations, savannas, water bodies and bare areas decreased by 4.76%; 63.76%; 0.23% and 2% respectively in 1990 to 2.22%; 40.14%; 0.02% and 0.13% in 2018. The diachronic analysis of land use from 1990 to 2018 showed an annual average regression of 9.86% for bare areas, 8.69% for river formations, 2.73% for water points and 1.65% for savannas. Orchards and fields recorded an average increase of 4.27% and 0.63% respectively in 2010. The study shows that the areas of savannas and riparian formations decrease in favor of fields and orchards in the municility of Kangala.