Mapping of open spaces in Urban Sokoto using remote sensing and geographic information systems

Urban Sokoto in the North West of Nigeria has being loosing Open Spaces to residential land uses due to laisser-faire, perhaps on the part of politicians or the planners who could not convince the former. In this paper, attempt has been made to map the Open Spaces within Urban Sokoto using Remote Sensing and GIS techniques. The result of the work revealed that the rapid increase in the rate of urbanization, have led to uncontrolled and consequently unplanned expansion of Urban Sokoto. This problem has also resulted into the gradual loss of open spaces for recreation and aesthetics due to quest for built up areas. A rapid growth in built-up land was observed from the analysis of the existing land use Map of 1992 and Quick Bird images of 2005 and 2010. It was found that the loss of open spaces increased from 48.32% in 1992 to 27.26% in 2010, and this trend may continue in 2020 leading to loss of more open spaces to residential land. This therefore, calls for the gentrification of the open spaces of the inner city of Sokoto.