Search

Most existing studies on land consumption have used a reactive approach to assess the phenomenon. However, for evidence-based policies, an initiative-taking forecast has been touted to be more appropriate. This study, therefore, assessed current trends and efficiency of land consumption in the Greater Accra Region from 1987 to 2017, and predicted a 30-year future land consumption in a "business-as-usual" scenario. The study adopted maximum likelihood image classification techniques and "combinatorial or" to model land cover change for Greater Accra from 1987 to 2017 while the UN-Habitat land efficiency index was employed to model efficiency of land consumption. In addition, Leo-Breiman Forest based regression, was used to model a future land cover by using the 30 years land cover change as a dependant variable and a series of natural and anthropogenic factors as independent variables. Results showed that artificial surfaces increased from 4.2% to 33.1%, with an annual growth rate of 22.1% in 30 years. Land consumption was highly inefficient as only 4.2% of the region had a good proportion of population per land area. Factors which influenced artificial surface growth were population, distance from water bodies, poverty index, distance from sacred groves, proportion of agriculture population with a small margin of influence from soil and geology type. Landscape prediction showed that artificial surfaces will increase to 92.6% as more places are coated with concrete. The high rate of land inefficiency provides an opportunity for re-zoning by the Land Use and Spatial Planning Authority of Ghana to accommodate the growing population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land use and land cover changes are local and place specific, occurring incrementally in ways that often escape our attention. This study sought to detect changes in land cover in the Tema Metropolis of Ghana from 1990 to 2010. Multispectral Landsat Thematic Mapper data sets of 1990, 2000 and 2007 were acquired, pre-processed and enhanced. Unsupervised classification of the images was performed and six land cover classes (water, wetlands, closed vegetation, open vegetation, cropped lands, and built-up) were derived. The post-classification change detection technique was performed to derive the changes in land cover and their corresponding change matrices. Between 1990 and 2010, built-up areas expanded steadily to become the most prevalent land cover type in the metropolis, reducing vegetation cover dramatically. High population growth with its attendant rise in the demand for housing, and increasing commercial activities, were found to have influenced land cover changes over the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Both nature and humans equally need each other for environmental sustainability. • Humans provide restoring and protecting services to nature while nature provides cultural and provisioning services to human. • Cultural services from nature had a positive interactional effect on protecting and restoring services to nature. • The level of vegetation cover and belief that nature is an abode for numinous beings helped in explaining the variance in services to and from nature. Ecosystem services are often conceptualised as a unidirectional flow of services from nature (S f N) to societies, neglecting services provided by societies to nature (S t N). Using respondents from four Ga/Dangme communities in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana, this study sought to develop a scale for measuring the dimensions of perceived S t N and S f N, assess the interactional effects between them and determine the changes they have undergone over time. Results showed that from 1987 to 2018, the services provided by the Ga/Dangme to nature were predominantly restoring services (through nature-rejuvenating activities like planting and pruning) and protecting services (via safeguarding measures such as taboos and prohibitions) while they received provisioning (food, water, fuel) and cultural services (which satisfy non-material needs including identity and spirituality) from nature. The study found a symbiotic relationship between S t N and S f N as provisioning services had a positive interactional effect on cultural and restoring services and a negative effect on protecting services. Cultural services, as well, positively influenced protecting and restoring services. The main determinants of S t N and S f N were the level of vegetation cover, the land cover type and the belief that nature is an abode for numinous beings. The effects of the socio-demographic characteristics of respondents on S t N and S f N and were marginal. We recommend that to ensure environmental sustainability, environmentalists should concentrate on cultural services that improve restoring and protecting services. Thus, traditional beliefs need to be contextualised and organised for transfer to younger generations through cultural channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]