Analysis of Land Use and Land Cover Changes in Owerri Municipal and Its Environs, Imo State, Nigeria (2005 – 2015)

Land use/land cover changes in Owerri Municipal and its environs which included Orogwe, Ubomiri, Emii, Uratta, Ihiagwa Egbu were studied as being driven by rapid population growth for urbanisation. The study applied the digital technology of Remote Sensing Geographic Information System (ARC GIS 9.3 Version software). These tools implored to generate land maps period; 2005, 2010 2015 determine area km2 each six classes types, percentage change total covered, accuracy overall classification including Kappa coefficient, while a scheme was used develop classified maps. Also satellite imagery period (2005-2015) imputed into ENVI 4.5 software environment, composited, digitized exported Arc. where they clipped with area. extracted image then back environment Arc.GIS TIFF format. This followed colour separation repeated all raw imagery. Image interpretation done on based set pixels Region Of Interest (ROI). Results are that coefficient values high enough 0.9099, 0.9557 0.9685 respectively indicating strong agreement between ground referenced information. Integrating remote sensing spectral, spatial temporal resolution at local scale urban environmental monitoring, effective use planning management current pattern among others recommended.