Urban sprawl has been investigated, analysed and modelled by considering the built-up areas as the key feature of sprawl, which was obtained through remote sensing and GIS. In view of this, supervised classification approach was utilized to derive six land cover maps from Digitized Topographical Map, NigeriaSat-1 and LANDSAT ETM+ multi-spectral images for the years 1964, 2004 and 2006 respectively; after the digitized Topographical map and NigeriaSat-1 were co-registered to LANDSAT ETM+. The result shows that urban area increased by 56.15% between 1964 and 2006, 33.96% between 2004 and 2006. In contrast, the same digitized Topographical map, (1964) and SPOT 5, (2005) image was also co-registered into IKONOS, (2008) image of the same study area to obtain a common Georeference and Coordinate system, and after classification in ILWIS 3.3 window, indicated an increase by 59.50% between 1964 to 2008, and with a fast growth of 25.98% between 2005 and 2008 only. Shannon?s Relative Entropy (E) was used to measure the degree of urban sprawl which indicates that total Entropy value is 0.7, indicating a high rate of sprawl. Yet again, the zones within the metropolis have individual Entropy values that range from -0.2 to 0.5. This revealed some compacted zones, while some have a tendency towards intensive urban sprawl. Finally, the urban land use change for the year 2021 was modelled and predicted using Remote Sensing and GIS result, population figures of (1991, 2006 and 2008), and Shannon?s Entropy technique. The result shows that between: 2008 to 2011 the built-up areas witnessed 71.68% increase; while 2011 to 2021 will experience 85.20% growth, with an annual rate of 1.35%. It is recommended among others, that, Government and relevant agencies should embark on detail mapping of urban and regional areas at the relevant scales, to update the old existing maps, and to monitor closely urban environment....
Authors: IGBOKWE, J. I, EZEOMEDO, I. C, EJIKEME J .