Land use and cover dynamics: impacts on soil erosion and sediment yield in the Barkana watershed, Northeast Ethiopia

Land use/land cover (LULC) change is major driver of soil erosion and sediment yield. This study examined the impacts of LULC dynamics on soil erosion and sediment yield in the Barkana watershed, Northeast Ethiopia, using GIS, remote sensing, the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE), and the Sediment Delivery Ratio model. Landsat images from 1993, 2008, and 2023 were classified into six LULC classes, achieving overall accuracies of 87.40–93.56% with Kappa coefficients of 0.86–0.89. Agricultural land expanded from 48.43% to 62.47%, while forest, shrubland, and grazing land declined substantially. Mean annual soil loss increased from 27.95 to 59.34 t ha−1 yr−1, and sediment yield increased from 8.6 to 15.7 t ha−1 yr−1 between 1993 and 2023. Approximately 16% of the watershed exceeded the tolerable soil loss threshold, indicating priority areas for intervention. These findings highlight the need for targeted soil and water conservation and sustainable watershed management.