This study quantified the extent of cropland abandonment in relation to bush/shrub encroachment and natural rangeland in Sencherere village, Limpopo Province, from 1994 to 2024. Landsat 5, 7, 8, and 9 images were used to classify three land-cover categories using a Random Forest algorithm, with overall accuracies ranging from 80% to 85% and Kappa coefficients between 0.73 and 0.80. Results show that cropland abandonment followed a non-linear trend, decreasing from 498 ha (37.7%) in 1994 to 200 ha (15.14%) in 2014, suggesting a period of recovery or re-cultivation during this interval. However, this trend reversed thereafter, with abandonment increasing again to 473 ha (35.81%) in 2024, indicating renewed abandonment of cultivated areas. This pattern suggests that cropland use in the study area is not a progressive one-directional abandonment process, but rather a cyclical interaction between abandonment and reclamation influenced by changing environmental and socio-economic conditions over time. Bush or shrub cover expanded substantially over the 30 years, increasing from 51 ha (3.86%) in 1994 to 354 ha (26.8%) in 2024, indicating a strong shift toward woody vegetation dominance. Natural rangeland cover fluctuated considerably from 195 ha in 1994 to 385 ha in 2004, declining to 65 ha in 2014 before partially recovering to 115 ha in 2024. Rainfall variability showed no clear long-term trend, suggesting that climatic patterns alone do not explain the observed land-cover changes; therefore, other drivers may have influenced this. The study highlights dynamic local trends of cropland abandonment and woody vegetation expansion, underscoring the need for continued monitoring and targeted investigation into the socio-economic and ecological drivers shaping these changes to support effective land-use planning and rangeland management in semi-arid communal systems.
Koti et al. (Sun,) studied this question.