Data on spatiotemporal land use land cover changes in peri-urban West Arsi Zone, Ethiopia: Empirical evidences from Shashemene peri-urban areas

Urban expansion is one of the major problems in Ethiopia resulting in displacement of the rural people inhabiting areas bordering the cities/towns. It is also resulting in land use land cover (LULC) changes affecting the livelihoods of the people and the ecosystems (Messay et al., 2017; Ganamo, 2013) [[1], [2]]. The data presented in this article, therefore shows the spatiotemporal LULC changes of peri-urban expansion areas of Shashemene City. The data were generated from Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM(+)) images (with path/row numbers 168/055) from EarthExplorer.usgs.gow and the data was classified, interpreted and cross-tabulated using ERDAS IMAGIN 2013 and ArcGIS 10.4.1 software packages. The accuracy of the image classification was verified by geo-location data collected from ground control points by using Geo Positioning System (GPS) receiver and the spatial resolution (1 m) and very recent (2016) Imagery downloaded from Google Earth. The result indicates that the built-up areas have increased by 1938.71 ha (19.3871 km(2)) with 73.4%, and 17.6% decline in forest land and grassland respectively between 1973 and 2016.