Simulating future land-use within the uThukela and uMngeni catchments in KwaZulu-Natal

Due to anthropogenic activities, the earth's surface is consistently being altered. These alterations take the form of Land-use/cover change (LULCC), which is a fundamental driver of global, regional and local environmental change. LULCC studies have become pivotal in supplementing our understanding and observations of environmental change. However, understanding the past and present spatial-temporal variability of LULCC characteristics and their link to future land-use/cover trajectories at a catchment scale is limited, particularly in Southern Africa. To address this limitation, this study simulated future land-use change utilising a spatially distributed, empirical land-use modelling approach for the uThukela and uMngeni catchments in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. The CA-Markov model, a popular and frequently utilised model employed in land-use and land-cover (LULC) predictive modelling, was selected to simulate LULCC conjointly with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) techniques. The obtained kappa values (Kstandard, Klocation and Kno) achieved during the validation were all above 80%, thus indicating the model's reliability and capability to successfully predict future LULC in the study sites. Future projections indicated that both study areas are anticipated to experience anthropogenic induced LULCC, which further fragments the landscape configuration, functionality and ecological stability. Historical analysis of LULCC between 1990 and 2018, in the study catchments revealed considerable declines in the areas under grassland and indigenous forest, while the areas under cultivated land, commercial forestry and urban LULC classes increased. Future LULC projections showed that urban and agriculture land-uses increased significantly, with natural land-use classes such as grassland, other vegetation and indigenous forest declining in spatial extent across both. With an understanding of the extent of projected LULCC by 2030 within both catchments, proactive planning and management within the framework of sustainable land-use planning and water resource management in the respective catchments can be undertaken. Moreover, the results of the land-use modelling study can be used to infill historical data gaps, support effective land-use planning and provide a means to evaluate the impacts of different future development pathways.