Spatial Dynamics of Buska Mountain Natural Forest in Hamer District, Southern Ethiopia

Ethiopia has a diverse landscape rich in natural resources, supporting a wide array of plants and animals. This makes the country a biodiversity hotspot, especially within its mountain natural forests. These forests play a crucial role in stabilizing land surfaces and providing a variety of ecosystem services; however, they are facing a decline due to various reasons. These forests in Ethiopia are public forests, which are open‐access resources that allow anyone to enter and cut off trees, resulting in deforestation. The objective of this study was to investigate the land cover changes of the Buska Mountain Natural Forest using household surveys, focus group discussions, and satellite image analysis. The data were analyzed with descriptive statistics. The household survey indicated a decline in forest cover, primarily due to agricultural expansion, population growth, illegal settlement, fires, economic factors, overexploitation, climate change, and so on. The satellite image analysis results indicated that the natural forest cover of 5549.2 ha (57.77%) and 3876.8 ha (23.5%) of shrublands have been lost during the past 3 decades; however, agricultural land areas increased by 9497.7 ha (65.1%). The forest cover decreased by 296.76 ha (3.09%), 211.08 ha (3.18%), and 39.24 ha (0.87%) annually during 1990–2022. Shrublands also decreased at the rates of 327.94 ha (1.99%) and 305.16 ha (2.31%) annually in the 1 st and 2 nd study periods, followed by a slight increment of 204.52 ha (0.81%) in the 3 rd study period, respectively. Agricultural land expansions increased at an alarming rate of 2.5% and 4.3% from the 1 st and 2 nd study periods and have slightly decreased by 0.63% annually in the 3 rd study period, respectively. The findings showed that the forest cover decreased across all study periods with a cumulative annual forest cover loss of 173.41 ha (1.8%) between 1990 and 2022. To ensure the sustainability of the Buska forest, this study recommended promoting natural regeneration by preventing illegal land use inside the forest, promoting bioeconomy like ecotourism and voluntary carbon markets, and technology intervention for the values of ecosystem services. It is vital to empower local communities, recognize property rights, and design comprehensive policies to handle economic concerns, rapid population growth, old farming methods, constraints to agropastoral livelihood divarication, the spread of invasive shrubs, and scientific research intervention for the values of forest ecosystem services.