The land use land cover class statistics were computed by subtracting the component areas covered by clouds and its shadows, over the image. This subtraction was the reason for the reduction in the size of the total area of the district under study. The presence of the cloud cover and shadow for example, reduced the total land area from 32,900 ha to 32,432 and 31,613 ha for the 1986 land areas, respectively. Results for the analysis of the 1986 image shows that the LULC types at that time was a reflection of the incidence of drought and wild fires that characterized the previous year starting from 1983 to 1985. From Figure 2, it can be observed that the vegetation cover of the district was largely degraded temporarily (since the vegetation regenerated in subsequent years).
Figure 2.