Abstract:
Land immensely supports billions of people all over the world giving
different livelihood options for their survival. The land is in a dynamic
nature both spatially and temporally. Due to various socio-economic
factors, it has become a scarce and degraded natural resource. Thus,
updated and reliable land information is essential for current and future
land use planning for land managers to achieve efficient and sustainable
land utilization in any area. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and
remote sensing are the most important techniques that can be used to
detect changes in land use and land cover in both spatial and temporal
dimensions. Thalawa DS occupies different land use categories which
now need greater attention due to improper land-use practices. The
purpose of this research was to analyse and quantification of land use and
land cover changes in four selected years as 1997, 2007,2015, and 2020 in
the Thalawa DS using geospatial technology which comprised GIS and
remote sensing. Open source Landsat satellite data obtained from the
United States Geological Survey in four different years were utilized to
identify and quantify land-use changes. As classification algorithm
Maximum Livelihood Classification (MLC) was mainly used for the
image classification using both Arc map 10.5 and ERDAS imagine 9.2
software. According to the final land-use change analysis -13.39 percent,
+11.08 percent, -4.7 percent, -2.44 percent, and +8.92 percent changes
have occurred in agricultural, homestead, forest, water bodies, and builtup
areas respectively from 1997 to 2020. During the four selected periods
homestead and the built-up area have been increased in the area giving
high pressure on natural resources such as government forests, and water
bodies. This should be taken into consideration by land-use planners
when they implement land use plans in the study area in future land use
planning.
