Modelling the impact of past and future land-use changes on land cover degradation at territorial level in Eastern DR Congo

Abstract Land use and land cover (LULC) changes are recognized as drivers of environmental changes at the local, regional, and global levels. Detecting these changes is essential in developing land management plans and strategies. More particularly, the LULC changes constitute one of the sub-indicators used for setting the baseline for land degradation neutrality (LDN) planning and assessing the progress toward the sustainable development goal 15.3. This study aims to determine the implication of LULC dynamics on land cover degradation in Eastern DR Congo. This region has been subjected to uncontrolled LULC changes over the last three decades but the impact of these changes on land degradation has not been assessed yet at the territorial level. To fill this gap, the territory of Kalehe has been used as a case study to monitor the LULC changes during the 1987–2020 period based on the classification of Landsat images, to forecast the future LULC for the 2030–2070 period through the hybrid Markov-Support Vector Machine modeling, to determine the extent of land cover degradation associated with these changes and to assess the impact of biophysical and socio-economic factors on the occurrence of land cover degradation using the binary logistic regression model. The results reveal that the overall trends of LULC changes during the 1987–2020 period are the increasing of built-up area, shrubland, and cropland at the expense of forestland, wetland, and grassland. This situation is expected to continue in the future and contribute to the degradation of land cover within the study area. Under the current situation of LULC changes, 34.17% of the land has been subjected to potential degradation. Furthermore, under the business-as-usual scenario 28.28%, 27.28%, and 33.65% of the land will be degraded by 2030, 2050, and 2070 respectively. This land cover degradation is more likely to occur in the proximity of roads, localities, highly populated areas, mining concessions, and high-altitudinal zones. Since the current land use system is unsustainable, there is a necessity to implement sustainable land management strategies that take into account the biophysical and socio-economic specificities of this region to reverse the problem of land cover degradation.