Land-Use Land-Cover Change, Rainfall Anomaly and Vegetation Response in Northern Jigawa State, Nigeria: Implications for Climate Variability and Sustainable Built-Environment Planning

Abstract

Land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) in semi-arid environments is an important pathway through which human activities modify vegetation condition, surface moisture, local temperature, rainfall response and environmental sustainability. This article, derived from a doctoral thesis on Northern Jigawa State, Nigeria, examines the relationship between land-cover change patterns and climate variability indicators, with particular attention to Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), rainfall, temperature and drought frequency. The study used multi-temporal satellite-derived vegetation evidence, rainfall and temperature records, rainfall-temperature regression outputs and socio-economic land-use indicators for selected reference years between 1986 and 2022. Results show that population increased from 2.1 million in 1986 to 5.4 million in 2022, while agricultural land use expanded from 5,200 km2 to 7,850 km2 and infrastructure projects increased from 12 to 67 over the same period. These pressures coincided with a decline in mean NDVI from 0.34 in 1986 to 0.25 in 2015, before a modest recovery to 0.29 in 2022. Rainfall declined from 720 mm in 1986 to 610 mm in 2015, followed by partial recovery to 650 mm in 2022, while average temperature rose from 28.1 deg C to 29.6 deg C in 2015 and stood at 29.1 deg C in 2022. Correlation results indicate strong negative relationships between NDVI and population (r = -0.91), agricultural land use (r = -0.88) and infrastructure projects (r = -0.85), while NDVI remained positively associated with rainfall (r = 0.70) and negatively associated with temperature (r = -0.79). Annual rainfall-temperature regression produced a moderately strong inverse relationship (R2 = 0.5475). The article concludes that vegetation decline, agricultural expansion and infrastructure growth are closely linked to climate-sensitive land-surface stress in Northern Jigawa State. It recommends NDVI- and rainfall-anomaly-informed land-use zoning, afforestation, green infrastructure, permeable surface protection and climate-sensitive built-environment planning.