Urbanization has a pivotal role to play on land use land cover changes and ecological degradation, in return with some socioeconomic benefits. Hence, it is important to have frequent update on urban information to secure urban land use sustainability in order to minimize its impacts on urban ecology. The aim of this study is to use geospatial techniques for assessment of land use land cover change detection of Adama city, Ethiopia. Four datasets of landsat 5 and 7 thematic mapper (TM) were used to identify LULC from 1984 to 2014 over a period of 30 years using maximum likelihood technique and subsequently analysed within a GIS environment. The study area has been categorized into five different LULC classes, namely, urban, agriculture, shrub and bushes, barren area and hilly area. Results shows that during the last thirty years, urban area has increased by 31.73% (i.e., 42.66 km2), while agriculture area have decreased by 24.53% (i.e., 32.98 km2). Further, it is observed that during this period, population in the area has increasing at an average rate of 5%. Correlating population and urban growth, it is found that by the year 2030 the whole area would be fully converted into urban area.