Detection of the changes of land use and land cover using remote sensing and GIS in Thalawa DS Division.

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.