Spatio-Temporal Land Cover Dynamics in Open Cast Coal Mine Area of Singrauli, M.P., India

Abstract

Singrauli is an opencast coal mining area where large scale mining activities are going on continuously, land use/land cover studies are of vital importance to observe the changes in the land use/land cover. The present study utilizes multi-spectral/multi-temporal data of Indian Remote Sensing Satellite (IRS) LISS II geocoded (FCC) of 4th May 1993 and LISS III of 4th May 2010 for thematic mapping. Survey of India toposheet 63L/12 on scale 1:50,000 were used for preparation of base map which was overlaid on the FCC for land use/land cover mapping through visual interpretation. Visual interpretation of satellite imagery led to the identification of 15 land use/land cover categories such as dense forest, open forest, open scrub, plantation, cultivated land, uncultivated land, mining pit, overburden dumps, wasteland and settlement. The ground truth verification was carried out in key areas to rectify the errors in generated maps and then land use/land cover maps were finalized. The comparative analysis of land use/land cover shows that dense forest has been degraded to open forest, open scrubs and mining pits due to the expansion of mining activity. Open scrubs has increased, overburden dumps has increased, settlement has also increased, cultivated land has decreased and changed into uncultivated land and wasteland. It has also been observed that the plantation has been done on overburden dumps and residential colonies of NCL and NTPC. It has been identified that the main drivers which has increased the rate of change in land use/land cover are mainly coal mining activities and industrial expansion.