Land Use/Land Cover Change Analysis of Doon Valley Using ArcGIS Tools

Abstract

One of the main starling issues for the country is the quick progress of urbanization. The stakeholders should take this factor in interest for the efficient and intensified urban improvement of the nation. Distinctive variations have been observed in land use/land cover due to the significant preferment of the urban sector. Land cover is a physical substance at the surface of the earth. In recent years, the employment of remotely sensed data and geographical information system (GIS) has been broadly adopted for the consequence of spatial data technologies. The present study aimed to investigate and examine the urban growth and extension in association with land use/land cover of Doon Valley, Uttrakhand, India, using IRS satellite data for the period of 20 years (1995, 2005, and 2015). The three satellite images of 1995–2015, path row 146/39, were procured from the USGS domain. The ISO cluster unsupervised classification method has been opted to classify the satellite images. The several bands pertaining to multiple land use were distinguished from remotely sensed data through GIS platform. After the processing of the data set, the analysis results that there is a radical hike in the urban area, agriculture, and barren land, but the green cover and water bodies within the study area are reduced.