Nigeria has about 68, 207 Square kilometers of wetlands out of the 923,000 Square kilometers land areas. A significant part of Nigerian wetlands are within urban areas holding high potentials for dry season farming and supplying all year round farm produce for urban teaming population.
Wetlands are very valuable areas for rural communities and peri-urban agriculture and they serve as the dominant agricultural lands in the arid parts of Nigeria. The South western part of Nigeria is served with natural drainage networks with their rich agricultural potentials from wetlands. These networks of river systems are available for agriculture for most part of the year especially around the perennial river systems. The wetlands are submerged for some period of the year and could be used for irrigation purpose.
The study used SPOT 5 satellite remote sensing obtained from google earth and other auxiliary soruces to map the wetland resources within the lower Osun river catchment area and delimited areas accessible for urban and peri-urban agriculture for the river basin.
The total wetlands and the farming potentials of the area were computed and estimated for the use of urban farming population. The wetland resources were categorized based on the accessibility to farming urban population.
*Lead Author
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This post was written by Prof. Oluseyi Fabiyi (Regional Centre for Training in Aerospace Surveys, Ile-Ife Nigeria). Contact him at fabiyi@rectas.orgfor more information.
