Evaluating historical and predicted long-term land use/land-cover change in Dodoma Urban District, Tanzania: 1992–2029

Land use/land-cover (LULC) change is an environmental issue of paramount importance across various spatiotemporal scales, and economic development policy must balance urban land demand against environmental concerns. The purpose of this study is to quantify historical and future LULC change in the Dodoma Urban District of Tanzania using an integration of geospatial techniques, cellular automata (CA) and artificial neural network analysis (ANN), and to evaluate the observed spatiotemporal trends. Results indicate an overall 435% increase in urban area from 11.54 km2 in 1992 to 61.75 km2 in 2029, and from 46.44 km2 to 94.35 km2 for grassland (103%). The rest of the categories experienced a decrease in the area for the same period: agriculture 2162.19 km2–2070.49 km2 (4%); forest 125.06 km2–119.39 km2 (5%) wetland 36.90 km2–36.52 km2 (1%) and other (shrubland and bare) 221.94 km2–221.48 km2 (0.2%). The study established a methodology workflow that can be extended to other locations, especially data-limited urban areas in developing world regions, and the findings advance land use and environmental management communities’ understanding of LULC dynamics in designing policies and regulations for guiding urban development in fragile natural ecosystems.