Background: Forest plays an important role in climate regulation and carbon sequestration. Komto Forest is one of the remnant natural forests found in Guto Gida district of East Wollega zone, Ethiopia, has been supporting the local community for construction, energy and household furniture. Currently, influenced by land use land cover change (LULCC), this forest has been declining at an alarming rate. Detecting LULCC and understanding the driving forces has important for supporting decision making processes. We examine variation in forest cover dynamics over the period 1991–2012 using Landsat TM image of 1991, ETM + of 2002 and OLI-TIRS of 2019. Results: The LULCC detection results show that a dramatic increase of agricultural land from (24.78%) in 1991 to (33.5%) in 2019 with annual expansion rate (23.68%) per annum, where forest cover declined by 20.1% in 1991 and 37.38% in 2019 with annual decreasing rate of 4.18% per annum. Our finding indicates the increment of agricultural land, grassland, and settlement, while the dense and open forest cover shows a declining trend. The declining of forest coverage is likely to cause unpleasant environment and affects human wellbeing. Conclusions: The massive declined in forest cover change are often associated with agricultural expansion in the periphery of the forest. Timber exploitation and charcoal production are other problems that contribute for the declining of forest coverage. Overall, our results suggest the need of participatory forest management and public awareness creation to sustain the Komto remnant forest.

The impact of land-use land-cover (LULC) change on soil resources is getting global attention. Soil erosion is one of the critical environmental problems worldwide with high severity in developing countries. This study integrates the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation model with a geographic information system to estimate the impacts of LULC conversion on the mean annual soil loss in the Temeji watershed. In this study, LULC change of Temeji watershed was assessed from 2000 to 2020 by using 2000 Landsat ETM+ and 2020 Landsat OLI/TIRS images and classified using supervised maximum likelihood classification algorithms. Results indicate that the majority of the LULC in the study area is vulnerable to soil erosion. High soil loss is observed when grassland and forest land were converted into cultivated land with a mean soil loss of 88.8 and 86.9 t/ha/year in 2020. Results revealed that about 6,608.5 ha (42.8%) and 8,391.8 ha (54.4%) were categorized under severe classes in 2000 and 2020, respectively. Accordingly, the soil loss severity class is directly correlated with the over-exploitation of forest resources and grasslands for agricultural purposes. These results can be useful for advocacy to enhance local people and stakeholder's participation toward soil and water conservation practices.

Climate change has been identified as a major challenge of rainfed agriculture. To contextualize whether there is climate change footprint, identification of rainfall and temperature trend at regional and local scale is helpful for designing long-term adaptation and mitigation strategies. The present study therefore aims to assess evidences of climate change presences in terms of, climate variability and trend in the wettest parts of Southwest Ethiopia. Daily and monthly historical gridded rainfall and temperature data (1983–2016) of ten stations were provided by Ethiopian National Metrological Agency. Moreover, long years historical recorded climate data of Nekemte and Bedele (1971–2020) and Sekoru (1981–2020) were used in the present study. Coefficient of variation, the Mann-Kendall non-parametric statistical test and Sen's slope estimator, linear regression analysis and the precipitation concentration index were applied to detect the presence of climate change in the southwest parts of Ethiopia. In this study, the trend package of open R software employed for trend identification and rate of change per year. The results indicate that the annual rainfall has declining trend at five stations with statistically significant at one station while the mean maximum and minimum temperature shows a statistically significant increasing trend at eight and six stations, respectively. At a seasonal scale, the amount of rainfall in the main rainy season (June to August) is dominated by a downward trend (eight out of ten stations) while, the autumn season (September to November) shows an increasing trend in all stations with statistically significant at one station. The precipitation concentration index analysis revealed that inconsistent and significantly irregular precipitation is observed at six stations (60%) of the ten stations. This study concludes that the climate of the wettest parts of Ethiopia is getting warmer and the amount of rainfall in the main rainy season has declined in the vast majority of the study area.

Background: Temporal change detection of informal settlement was conducted using geographic information system and remote sensing in order to evaluate the land use land cover change (LULCC) in Jimma city, southwestern Ethiopia. We analyzed the LULCC since 1997 using Landsat imagery of 1997, and aerial photography of 2007 and 2017. Qualitative and quantitative data was also collected from city residents by using structured questionnaires focusing on peoples’ perceptions to understand the pattern of informal settlements in the study area. Maximum likelihood supervised classification methods was employed to create the signature class of the five land cover classes: built up, vegetation, barren land, open land and agricultural land. Results: The results indicated that the informal settlement has been increased in the peripheries from 29% in 1997, 37% in 2007 and 41% in 2017. This study focuses on the continued transformation of various land uses into informal settlements, causing encroachment on agricultural and open land particularly in the city periphery. The unprecedented population growth and unplanned development activities in urban areas results in urban agglomeration, which increase the price of land market for construction. This implies that rapid population growth, shortage of formal housing and unaffordable cost of formal housing for urban dwellers contributed to informal settlements. Conclusions: Increasing urbanization and rapid population growth are often associated with the development of urban informal settlements. Informal settlements and urban informality are the common problems particularly in the periphery of Jimma city. These results can be used as a basis for informal settlement assessment in other cities in the country and beyond.

Impacts of human-wildlife conflict in developing countries