Historical and Projected Land Use/Cover Dynamics in the River Namatala Catchment, Nile Basin, Uganda

Land use and land cover (LULC) change is among the most consequential drivers of environmental transformation in tropical river catchments, with cascading effects on water resources, ecosystem services, biodiversity, and land productivity. This study investigates historical and projected LULC dynamics in the River Namatala Catchment (626.3 km²), eastern Uganda, a critical tributary of the River Mpologoma within the Nile Basin, where catchment-scale studies integrating multi-temporal remote sensing with validated future scenario modelling remain scarce. Multi-temporal Landsat imagery processed on Google Earth Engine was used to generate supervised Random Forest LULC classifications for six epochs between 1995 and 2020. Classification accuracy was consistently high (Overall Accuracy: 96.8–97.5%; Kappa: 0.83–0.89). Future LULC scenarios for 2030 and 2040 were generated using TerrSet Land Change Modeler with a Multi-Layer Perceptron neural network, validated against the 2020 map (Kappa = 0.86; OA = 98.1%), incorporating six spatial drivers including road networks, water infrastructure, wetland proximity, slope, population density, and conservation zones. Grassland dominated throughout, peaking at 70.57% (2007) before declining to 61.25% by 2020. Cropland expanded markedly from 10.21% to 22.45% (+76.66 km²), while wetlands suffered catastrophic loss, declining 12.11 percentage points from 14.36% to 2.25% (-75.86 km²). Forestland showed a net decline of 4.58%, punctuated by conservation-driven recovery episodes. Projections to 2040 indicate continued cropland expansion to 25.13%, moderate forestland recovery to 18.80% under Central Forest Reserve protection, and further wetland and grassland contraction. These findings underscore the urgent need for integrated land use planning, strengthened wetland protection, and coordinated landscape conservation in the Namatala Catchment.