Land Use Land Cover Dynamics Using Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques in Western Doon Valley, Uttarakhand, India

Abstract

Land use land cover (LULC) change analysis emerged as one of the most significant factors which assist decision makers to ensure sustainable development and to understand the dynamics of our changing environment. An integrated approach of remote sensing and GIS has been used to study the land use land cover dynamics of the Western Doon Valley, Uttarakhand. Landsat satellite imageries of two different time periods, i.e., Landsat ETM{\thinspace}+{\thinspace}data of 2001 and 2010 were acquired and used to quantify the land use land cover changes in the study area from 2001 to 2010 over a period of one decade. ERDAS Imagine 10 software has been used to carry out the supervised classification using a maximum likelihood technique. The images of the study area were categorized into five different classes, viz., agricultural land area, settlement area, forest cover area, wasteland area, and water body area. The result indicates that during the decadal period, the agriculture forest and settlement area have increased about 6.22% (i.e., 25.19 km2), 0.30% (i.e., 2.66 km2), 2.17% (20.47 km2), respectively, while area under other land categories such as wasteland and water bodies have decreased about 6.16% (i.e., 22.67 km2) and 2.52% (i.e., 0.22 km2), respectively. The Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM), digital elevation model (DEM) data have been used for determination of slope analysis and it is found that most of the LULC changes have occurred in the area where slope percentage was in nearly level to gentle categories. The accuracy assessment and Kappa coefficient of both data sets have also been determined and found that in the 2001 accuracy assessment was 85.35% and in 2010 accuracy assessment was 89.59%. The technique used in the study shows the importance of digital data-based change detection techniques for the nature and location of a change in the study area.