Analysis of Lake Muhazi Marshland Degradation

Abstract

Lake Muhazi is a long thin shallow flooded valley lake shared by Eastern, Northern Provinces and Kigali City of Rwanda but with a bigger part of it located in the eastern region. The analysis of Lake Muhazi marshland is the fundamental reason for this study through the detection of land use land cover in marshland of Lake Muhazi. Land covers classification through acquisition of Remote Sensing Imagery. Image classification to determine the nature and magnitude of marshland. This study uses GIS analysis, Remote Sensing Imagery and sampling method to successfully get sample size and enough data collection. Characterization of the marshlands of Lake Muhazi located in north east of Rwanda using Landsat TM data enabled an estimation of the rate at which disruption of water supply has led to the collapse of the ecosystem. Image classification techniques were used to estimate vegetation distribution using an NDVI image. Vegetation collapse appears to be linked to the completion of drainage projects that prevent the influx of nutrient rich spring flood waters to the marshes. The marshland change analysis determine how marshland was used from the year 2006 to 2016 in time range of 5 years. According to the maps showing the classification on land use and land cover near the lake is that the marshland, agriculture and built-up in this area was few in 2006 but forestry were as many as possible because this area was not built and there was few population. The results argues that the affected marshland must be protected for environment protection for a better use of the marshland to increase the productivity of marshland like agriculture production, touristic production, safe home for the aquatic species.