Analysis of the effect of land use and land cover change on surface temperature in Rwanda during last three decades. Case study of Bugesera district

Abstract

Land Use and Land Caver has significant influence on climate elements such as temperature, Precipitation, humidity etc, and it has great impact directly to the change of mentioned climate elements especially temperature which are measures of climate change. The data utilized during this research are the recorded temperature (ENACTS) dataset from Rwanda Meteorology Agency (Meteo Rwanda) from 1991 to 2020, and Land Use and Land Cover images (Landsat images) generated by the US Geological Survey (USGS). To examine the trend in temperature variability, the study used graphical and statistical approaches. The trend results from graphical method indicate that there is temperature variability and Statistical approaches indicate that there is enough evidence from statistics for deciding that there is a significant increase both maximum and minimum temperature trend over Bugesera excepting SOND season which indicate a non-significance decline. The results indicated a coefficient of variation of 1.951% in maximum and 4.706% in minimum temperature of JJA season, a coefficient of variation of 2.742% in maximum and 4.807 in minimum temperature of JF season, a coefficient of variation of 2.143% in maximum and 4.092% in minimum temperature of MAM season, a coefficient of variation of 2.274% in maximum and 4.126% in minimum temperature of SOND season, a coefficient of variation of 1.387% in maximum and 3.959% in minimum annual temperature. Based on these result of coefficient of variation from different seasons, the minimum temperature varies more than maximum temperature.