Assessment of Land Use and Land Cover Dynamics Using Geospatial Techniques

Abstract

Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) changes are important for sustainable water and land resources management. In this study, an attempt is made to perform quantitative analysis of past and future LULC changes at catchment scale. A case study is taken over Chittar catchment a tributary of Tharamirabarani river basin, Tamilnadu of India. In this study, LULC is grouped as per NRSC Level 1 scheme consists of five sub classes viz. built up land, agricultural land, waste land, water bodies and forest land. The 2000 and 20005 LULC maps are used as base maps to determine the transition potential. Then, CA-ANN is espoused to forecast the LULC for the year 2010. The kappa statistics is used to measure the spatial accuracy between forecasted and historical LULC for year 2010. The overall spatial matching between the two LULC is 91% and the kappa coefficient is 86%. From the total 30 years of past and future LULC, almost 58% of area is covered with the agricultural land, followed by 16% of forest, 15% of waste land and 11% of built up and water bodies. Change detection analysis is carried out at 10 and 30 years interval. This LULC change analysis is important for hydrological model development and land resources management.