Monitoring land cover changes in coastal tract of Odisha using landsat ETM+ imagery

Abstract

Alteration of land cover takes place dramatically because of great forces of natural calamities. Qualitative and quantitative information about these changes are useful for sustainable management of natural resources. Especially coastal areas are prone to land coverage changes due to many reasons, among which natural calamities rank as one of the major factor. Odisha, being located in Eastern part of India, covering 480 km coastal tract is very susceptible to frequent natural catastrophes like cyclone and super cyclone. In this paper, land cover change dynamics were investigated by the combined use of satellite remote sensing and geographical information systems. The main objective of the study was to determine land-cover changes among land cover types in coastal areas of Kendrapara. Landsat ETM+ images of the year 2000 and 2006 were used to gather land cover change data of the coastal belt of Kendrapara district, Odisha. The images were classified using unsupervised classification and a post-classification comparison approach was used in change detection. The results show increase in agricultural areas and other vegetated areas but decrease in water bodies and soil and barren areas.