Land Degradation in the Peri-Urban Area : The Case of Kaduna Metropolis, Nigeria

The book revealed that the land use is generally for agriculture (rainfed crop farming and animal husbandry), forest reserve, soil mining and refuse dumping while, the land covers are crops, trees (both exotic and indigenous species), shrubs, grasses, litters and refuse. Land use and land cover changes revealed forest use to agriculture and from tree/grass cover to crop cover and bare land respectively. The overall rate of degradation stands at 1%. The major types of degradation in the area are loss of surface soil rich in organic material, distortion of the land surface morphology, gully erosion, deforestation, flooding and indiscriminate dumping of refuse. Fourteen variables were selected for the analysis of the causes of land degradation. The results of correlation reveals that the partial correlation coefficient between the size of area degraded and slope is 0.563 while with the size of land use for agriculture, types of degradation and numbers of economic trees are -0.992, -0.630 and -0.496 respectively and they are all significant at 5% test level. Using the regression model the most important explanation of land degradation is the size of land used for agriculture.