Spatiotemporal Analysis of Land Use / Land Cover in Swat, Pakistan Using Supervised Classification in Remote Sensing: 2000 to 2015

Abstract

Changes in land use and land cover affect the social, economic and natural aspects of any area. Mostly land use and land cover (LULC) changes are the result of population growth and human activities in the form of urban agglomerations and industrialization etc. Physical factors like soil structure and type, slope condition, topography are main aspects. Land use change defines the historical pattern that how people used that specific land which depends on the availability of resources and economic conditions. LULC changes may trigger the detrimental effects like increase in natural hazard events and changes in climatic patterns. Climatic pattern directly affects the precipitation, groundwater recharge, the amount of evapotranspiration and runoff generation. On regional and local scale, LULC change is a far-reaching issue because environment and climate condition depend on it