Gara Raja Rao, Kollu Sai Satya Mounika, Mokka Jagannadha Rao, (doi: 10.23953/cloud.ijarsg.404)

Land use & Land cover change detection analysis has been carried out in the present study covering the Nagavali and Vamsadhara Fluvial system (18°40′N to 18°09′N latitude and 84°10′ E to 83°39′E longitude). Satellite images of Landsat-7 ETM+ (2000) Landsat ETM+ (2010) Landsat OLV-TIRS (2016) and 1975 SI Toposheets have been used to study the temporal changes in the land use and land cover by onscreen digitisation techniques in ARC GIS 10.1 software followed by image processing to obtain changes in various classes of land use during study period from 1975 to 2016. The classes include plantation, settlements, water bodies, coastal area, wetlands, agriculture land and area under river course of both rivers. The classes, which have shown an increased area from 1975 to 2016, include Agriculture (from 56.93 % to 63.95%) and Settlements (from 1.40% to 3.43%). The classes that have shown the decreasing trend of Land Use are Plantation (from 19.76% to 13.14%), water bodies (from 2.29% to 0.77%), Wetlands (from 0.72% to 0.57%). The area under river course of both the rivers has shown a decreasing trend. The analysis reveals that due to increased irrigation facility plantation, wetlands and water bodies have brought under agricultural use and this trend need to be arrested. The Plantation area for natural resource management furthermore declines the soil erosion in between the Vamsadhara and Nagavali river area.