Assessment of Land Use Change and Its Ecological Impacts in the Hadejia-Nguru Wetlands, Jigawa State

This study assesses land use change patterns and their ecological consequences in the Hadejia-Nguru Wetlands of Jigawa State, North East Nigeria. These internationally recognised wetlands, designated under the Ramsar Convention, support millions of migratory birds, freshwater fisheries, and flood-recession agriculture, but decades of upstream dam construction, overgrazing, and agricultural encroachment have progressively reduced their ecological extent and function. Multi-temporal Landsat satellite imagery from 2000, 2013, and 2022 was processed to produce land cover maps for the wetland and a fifteen-kilometre buffer zone, using supervised classification. Change detection analysis quantified transitions between open water, wetland vegetation, agricultural land, grassland, and bare earth. Ecological impact assessment drew on published biodiversity and fisheries productivity data for the Hadejia-Nguru system. Field interviews with 40 farmers and 20 fishers in Guri and Hadejia Local Government Areas documented livelihood changes attributable to wetland change. Results confirm a 32 percent reduction in open water and dense wetland vegetation between 2000 and 2022, with the largest losses in the northern sections most dependent on seasonal flooding. Agricultural encroachment accounts for 61 percent of vegetation loss. Fisher households report declining catch-per-effort ratios, and migratory bird count data from published studies show corresponding declines in waterbird concentrations. The study recommends reinforcing the upstream environmental flow allocation agreement under the Lake Chad Basin Commission. Keywords: land use change, wetland ecology, Hadejia-Nguru, Jigawa State, Ramsar.