Shomadi, the study area is located south/south east of Renk County in Upper Nile State. It lays within the grids 11° 29' 11.76" N - 32° 43' 39.45"E and 11° 43' 40.62" N - 32° 48' 16.59"E with total area of 169,283.79 ha. The rich vegetation cover of Shomadi area is seriously deterioration due to increasing irrational anthropogenic activities. All attempts to manage this resource in sustainable manner failed due to lack of information. Therefore it became necessary to carry out this study with the objective to identify the dominant and the endangered species; distribution and density so that to determine the trend, main drivers to understand the dynamics of vegetation cover during the period 1972-2005 and produce thematic maps. To achieve these objectives, geospatial technology supplemented with ancillary ground truth is used. The results of ERDAS imagine version 9.1 and statistical analysis showed a remarkable decrease in forest lands from 33.20 % to 20.50%, barren lands from 02.58% to 0.76%, water bodies from 0.75% to 0.50%, and built up from 0.09% to 0.07% respectively during the period 1972-2005. While data of agricultural land reflected an increase from 25.70 % to 43.79%, and the range lands from 18.84% to 34.38 % respectively for the same period. The frequency distribution of the dominant species showed great variability, where Acacia mellifera reflected the highest frequency distribution (96%), followed by Cadaba rotundifolia (59%) and Acacia nubica (44%), meanwhile the Albizzia sericocephala showed the lowest value of frequency (1%). Moreover, the result showed tree density in the study area ranges between 28-1639 trees/ ha. according to the human activities. As conclusion, irrational land use/land cover resulted in decrease of vegetation lands, losses of wildlife and habitats, negative impact on hydrological cycle, socio-economic and environmental settings.

Keywords: Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+), Anthropogenic, Ancillary, Ground truth. Thematic Map (TM), Muti.Sensor Scanner (MSS).

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