An Assessment of Public Perception on the causes of climate change and Human Migration in Dryland Area of Katsina State, Nigeria
The study aimed to assess the Public Perception of climate change and human migration in dryland Area of north western Nigeria with the view to establish the causes of climate change and Popution Migration in the area. Qualitative and quantitative method of research was adopted in this study. The instruments used; includes interviews guide, a questionnaire survey, observations and photographs. The analysis was based on a sample of 384 respondents. The qualitative data was analyzed by means of cording using matrix form, descriptions, and visual presentations, whilst quantitative data was processed through the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) and complimented by Microsoft Excel to generate frequencies and calculated percentages, means, standard deviation and Spearman correlation coefficient. The findings revealed that the level of climate change was rated high with average mean value of 2.8536 in the area. This means that there is evidence of climate change and perceived causes of climate change was rated Very high with mean value of 4.3698. Manmade activities (anthropogenic) were the major cause of climate change in the study area followed by bush burning and deforestation. The study recommended that further research is required to expand on the finding presented in this study in conducting further research using land sat thematic mapper (TM) and enhance thematic mapper (ETM) imageries to look at spatio- temporal land use and land cover types as a result of human and natural influence. In order to address issues on climate change, educating people and enlightment programme on climate change can be done through media such as Radio and television programme so that to minimize the human activities that causes the climate change.
Keywords: climate change|thematic mapper|anthropogenic|causes|Dryland