Monitoring Land Use Land Cover Change for Dehradun District of Uttarakhand from 2009-2019

Abstract

Land cover indicates the physical land type on the earths surface in the form of waterbodies, vegetation etc. whereas land use refers to the human adjustments with the land. Human has been modifying the land as a resource to fulfill their own needs since time immemorial but recently changes in land use land cover is unprecedented at local, regional as well as at the world level. These changes builds an enormous pressure on the surrounding environment and leading to climate change and loss of biodiversity. Thus, an attempt has been made to detect changes in land use land cover classes in Dehradun district of Uttarakhand state. The study has been carried out for 10 years (2009-2019) through remote sensing approach using satellite imageries of LANDSAT-5 "TM" for March 2009 and LANDSAT-8 "OLI" & "TIRS" sensor for April 2019. Methodology based on supervised classification has been applied using maximum likelihood in QGIS. The current analysis resulted that the district Dehradun has experienced land use land cover changes rapidly, as the area occupied by vegetation was about 46 percent during 2009 has decreased to 28 percent in 2019. About 27.54 percent area covered by vegetation gets turned into agriculture, 4.60 percent area into urban/ built-up and 6 percent into barren land. Agriculture and Urban/ Built-up area has increased immensely. Other land use land cover classes such as waterbody and barren land has also undergone changes. Monitoring and mediating the consequences of LULC classes has therefore become a major priority of researchers and policymakers around the world.