Adekayode F. O
Reader (Associate Professor)
Federal University of Technology
Nigeria

Biography
Dr. F.O. Adekayoe is a Reader (Associate Professor) in the Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria. He holds PhD in Soil Management, PGD in Remote Sensing and GIS. His area of specialization is Soil Management and Geoinformatics. Further details on him can be accessed on www.francis-adekayode.com.

Abstract
The use of Remotely Sensed Landsat Imagery to assess Forest Depletion and Urban Growth Rate in Akure South Local Government Area, Nigeria over a Twenty Year Period

The rate of forest depletion and urban growth in Akure South local Government Area Nigeria from 1986 to 2007 was studied using remotely sensed landsat images. Akure, the capital of Ondo State, Nigeria was located in Akure South local Government Area. The bands of each landsat images of 1986, 2002 and 2007 on imagery Path 190 and Row 055 acquired from the Global Land Cover Facility website were layer stacked and the Akure South Local Government boundary subset using the Erdas Imagine software. The subset images were exported to ILWIS for supervised classification using the maximum likelihood algorithm. Image pixels were grouped into four classes of urban areas, uncleared forest, forest regrowth and rock outcrop. The total land area of Akure South Local Government Area was 29,060.7 ha and the areas occupied by urban settlement in 1986, 2002 and 2007 were 1,285.4 ha, 2,832.9 ha and 4,037.7 ha respectively and the forested areas declined from 25, 138.1 ha in 1986 to 23, 620.9 ha in 2007. The depletion of forest and increase in urban settlement had effects on the rainfall distribution pattern and not on the total rainfall. The onset of rains in 1986 was in February with 150 mm rainfall while in 2002 the onset was in March with 121.3 mm rainfall and in 2007 the onset was in May with 204.4 mm rainfall. There was a resultant shortened farming season after twenty years of gradual forest depletion.