Urban sprawl and its impact on land use land cover dynamics of Sekondi-Takoradi metropolitan assembly, Ghana

Abstract

In Ghana, Sekondi-Takoradi has been one of the preferred cities for many people due to the prevalence of industries, the presence of harbor, and the airport. However, the discovery of oil off the coast of the Western region, where Sekondi-Takoradi is the administrative and economic capital makes it more attractive to people in the area. This has increased the number of urban dwellers and resulted in the conversion of different and Land Use /Land Cover (LULC) forms into urban or built-up areas. Using Landsat imageries from 1991, 2002, 2008, and 2018 of Sekondi-Takoradi, together with geospatial and Shannon's entropy techniques, this paper assesses the impact of urban sprawl on land use and land use dynamics within the metropolis. Results of land use land cover change showed significant changes during the period of study. Settlement increased by 25.93% whereas water, vegetation, and bare land reduced by 0.08%, 16.00%, and 9.86% respectively. This reveals the occurrence of an unguided expansion of built-up area in the metropolis. Also, results from entropy calculations showed high entropy values ranging from 2.42 to 2.50, though the entropy values did not significantly change throughout the study. This indicates that the metropolis has been experiencing sprawl from 1991 to 2018 and thus urban development has significantly changed the land cover stratum of the metropolis. The findings demonstrate the value of spatial modeling in environmental management and urban planning.