Land use land cover detections using MODIS MCD12Q1 V6.1 and ESRI Sentinel-2 datasets in the Lake Chamo catchment

ABSTRACT Understanding the change dynamics of land use and land cover (LULC) has a critical influence on hydrological characteristics of a watershed, economic development, ecological variation, and climate changes, and has been used to resolve the current dilemmas between land, water, energy, and the food sector. It is also essential as the change observed reflects the status of the environment and provides input parameters for sustainable natural resource management and optimization. The Chamo catchment has undergone a large change in LULC which has increased the soil erosion and lake sedimentation. In this paper, long-term variations in LULC were evaluated using MODIS and ESRI Sentinel-2 datasets. As a result, a significant variation in LULC was observed in the study area from 2001 to 2022. Spatial and temporal variations of LULC were observed between the two datasets. Based on MODIS, grassland was the dominant LULC class, whereas for ESRI, rangeland and cropland were the dominant LULC. The result of the study was essential for policy-makers and stakeholders for management of sustainable economic development, lake water management, ecological maintenance, and climatic change adoption pathways. The findings of the study provided evidence that MODIS and ESRI Sentinel-2 are effective datasets used for detecting LULC variations that be applied in different areas.