_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ *Corresponding author: Email: kibemodetamo86@gmail.com; Original Research Article ASSESSMENT OF WETLAND DEGRADATION USING GEOSPATIAL TECHNIQUES IN LAKE BOYO, SOUTHERN ETHIOPIA TESFAYE LETEBO a , KIBEMO DETAMO a* AND ALEM TESFAY a a Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Wachemo University, Ethiopia. AUTHORS’ CONTRIBUTIONS This work was carried out in collaboration among all authors. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. ABSTRACT Although wetlands occupy less than 6% of the earth’s land area, they contribute a lot for ecosystem services than their small area implies. This study aims to model the wetland degradation of Boyo Lake using Geospatial techniques. This study uses Landsat 7 ETM for the year 2000 and 2010 while Landsat 8 OLI used for 2020. The imageries were extracted and geometrically corrected using boundary polygon data using Spatial Analyst Tool in ArcGIS 10.8. Supervised classification was performed using the Maximum Likelihood Classifier. A comparison of land cover statistics assisted in identifying the trend and rate of change at wetland over time. In 2000, water and wetland covered an area of 2743.9 ha (53.3%) and 1680.3 ha (32.7%) of the area, respectively. The analysis shows that water and wetland coverage declined to 1922.9 ha (37.4%) and 1309.4 ha (25.4%) while farmland have increased to 1765.23 ha (34.3%) in 2010. Subsequently, area coverage by water and wetland further declined to 1579.1 (30.7%) and 627.94 (12.21 %) respectively, in 2020. The area under wetland is threatened dramatically with increasing encroachment of farmland over the years. Protecting wetlands from degradation needs the multi-stakeholders involvement and policy enforcement. Keywords: Boyo Lake; GIS; remote sensing; Wetland. 1. INTRODUCTION About 50% of the global wetland area has been lost as a result of human activities from the estimates of global wetland area range from 5.3 to 12.8 million km 2 ; about half of the global wetland area has been lost, but an international treaty [1,2] has helped 144 nations protect the most significant remaining wetlands [3,4]. Because most nations lack wetland inventories, changes in the quantity and quality of the world’s wetlands cannot be tracked adequately [5]. Despite the likelihood that remaining wetlands occupy less than 6% of the earth’s land, they contribute much