期刊名称：International Journal of Advances in Engineering and Management
电子版ISSN：2395-5252
出版年度：2021
卷号：3
期号：9
页码：319-335
DOI：10.35629/5252-0309153157
语种：English
出版社：IJAEM JOURNAL
摘要：The international community has been well aware of the severe impact that large scale refugee populations can have on the social, economic and political life of host developing countries. Nevertheless, few studies have quantified the environmental impact of the growing number of internal and external refugees flow created by political, economic or environmental crises, particularly in the case of Rwanda. The present study was aimed at assessing the impacts of Mahama refugees‟ camp settlement on land cover change. The current study tries to provide an insight on using Google earth and ArcGIS to assess the environmental impact of large-scale refugee movements and concentrations. The change detection analysis integrated with spatial metrics performed in this research allowed to examine the levels of environmental impact caused by establishment of Mahama refugees‟ camp, and therefore allowed to determine the effects that refugees‟ settlement had had both inside and around the refugees‟ camp through image classification of land cover changes overtime and space. The findings revealed that the effects of refugees‟ settling on the land cover in the surroundings of Mahama refugees‟ camp by using images of the area for 2010 and for 2020 which outcome that the vegetation cover changed to bare land and cultivation field whilst the cultivation field from forest and unchanged area was detected. The vegetation cover which was 91.8% decreased to 30 % and bare land which was 8.2% increased to 11.2 % of total area. The study also presents different causes of changes in land cover, and emphasizes that the level of environmental degradation observed has been accentuated by the establishment of Mahama refugees‟ camp in area close to protected area such as Akagera wetland.
