Detection of Land Use and Land Cover Changes: A Case Study of Kumbur River Basin

Abstract

Kumbur River basin has been one of the bio­diversity areas in India. Land use and land cover study of a particular area has been one of the most important criteria to know about the usage pattern of the environmental conditions. With every passing year, we can see a change in land use and land cover classification in the study area, a part of the Western Ghats located in Tamilnadu. In this study, an effort is made to understand the changes in land use and land cover in the study area over a period of 24 years (1990­ 2014). The study has been done through remote sensing tools using Survey of India map (1990) and the Landsat imageries of the study area (January, 1990, January, 2001, February, 2010 and June, 2014). The land use and land cover classification was implemented based on the supervised classification using the maximum likelihood method. Thematic maps were prepared by using GIS software. Accuracy assessment has been done for the classification by ground truth observations. The present study showed that land use and land cover of the study area has experienced a vast change between 1990 and 2014. Mainly Developed areas (built-up and agricultural land) have increased from 13% to 35% of the total area (13.9%, 20.13%, 29.4%, and 35.5% in the specified periods, respectively). Thus, proper management of the land resource is the need of the hour in the study area.