Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-021-09222-8 Land‑use and land‑cover change in the lowlands of Bale Zone, Ethiopia: its driving factors and impacts of rangeland dynamics in livestock mobility Behailu Legese · Abel Balew  Received: 29 December 2020 / Accepted: 12 June 2021 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 rangeland of Bale lowlands was degraded with annual rate of −0.8%. The study also revealed that expan- sion of farmland, settlement, communal land, and bush encroachment was the main driving factors for LULC change in Bale lowlands. Bale pastoralists are vulnerable to the death of their livestock, and they need to travel long distances because of rapid range- land degradation. Therefore, suitable land-use and management policies for pastoral communities should be formulated and implemented so as to permanently mitigate the problem. Keywords LULC · Remote sensing · Rangeland dynamics · Livestock mobility · Bale lowlands Introduction Rangelands are areas that have diferent vegeta- tion composition, for instance, prairie lands, tundra, mountainous, shrublands, grasslands, savannas, and marshlands (Allen et al., 2011). It is also described as non-arable areas primarily used for livestock grazing such as sheep, goats, and cattle, and it covers about one-half of the Earth’s land surface (Tongway & Ludwig, 2010). In worldwide, rangeland cover about 40–50% of the landmass (Mitchell, 2000). Rangeland is used as a source of various natural resources and a source of the livelihood of the community (Dovie et al., 2002; Shackleton et al., 2007). It also serves as a habitat for wildlife and a source of forage for the Abstract Rangeland in Bale lowlands has been seriously degraded due to human-induced problems and natural factors. The study was conducted to ana- lyze LULC change and its deriving factors and evalu- ate the impacts of rangeland dynamics on livestock mobility in Bale lowlands from 1990–2020. Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) 1990, Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM +) 2000, and Operational Land Imager (OLI) 2014 and 2020 were chosen to derive LULC classes using maximum likelihood image clas- sifer. Besides, a household survey was used to under- stand the major causes of LULC change, as well as the impacts of rangeland dynamics on livestock mobility. The accuracy reports of classifed LULC classes of the study were 88.2% (1990), 89.19% (2000), 93.8% (2014), and 95.2% (2020). The result of the study revealed that there was extreme bush encroachment (545.54%), expansion of settlement (19,166%), and farmland (171.27%) while forest cover has slightly decreased (−8.76%) from 1990 to 2020. On the other hand, shrubland (−72.74%) and grassland (−59.2%) have extremely declined. During the study period, B. Legese  Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Madda Walabu University, Robe, Ethiopia e-mail: behailugisrs@gmail.com A. Balew (*)  Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Woldia University, Woldia, Ethiopia e-mail: abelbalew@gmail.com / Published online: 28 June 2021 Environ Monit Assess (2021) 193: 453