Mr.

Abstract

Existing studies have shown that land use land cover changes over many urban areas have significantly contributed to variation in climate. The study examined the spatial and temporal variability of land cover changes of Ilorin, North central Nigeria from 1986 to 2015. It also quantified the possible long term seasonal and annual climate conditions over the area with a view to assessing the effects of land use land cover changes on climate. A medium resolution Landsat satellite images was downloaded from the earth explorer website and was used to classify the land use land cover change of Ilorin, Kwara State into 1986, 2000 and 2015 scenarios respectively. Subsequently, temperature and rainfall raw data were also obtained through the global Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) in twenty-one weather stations Data obtained was subjected to appropriate descriptive and inferential statistics. The results showed that urban built up area increased by 17. 93% and water body by 1. 04% while cropland and savannah areas decreased by 15.19% and 63.30% respectively between 1986 and 2015. However, there were gradual decline in the inter annual rainfall trend for the period (1986- 2015) by 16.44 mm as well as increase in annual temperature trends by 1.040C. The study concluded that land use land cover changes may have negative implications on climate in the north central Nigeria. There is therefore need to encourage conservation practices, including afforestation for sustainable development.