Land-Use/ Land-Cover Change Detection and Analysis in Aglar Watershed, Uttarakhand

Abstract

Land-Use and Land-Cover (LULC) change has a significant impact on watershed processes such as hydrology, soil erosion, carbon sequestration, etc. While analyzing the interactions of various natural and human activities and assessing their impacts, the Land-Use/ Land-Cover change plays an important role. It forms an important component whose interaction with environment and humans need to be assessed.  Although LULC change is a result of both natural and human activities, they are often linked to human activities. Natural activities for e.g. flash floods, earthquake, rain triggered landslides, etc., play an important role in changing the LULC of an area andmay also result in drastic changes in watershed characteristics. One major example of this kind is the extreme rainfall events which occurred in June 2013. After these events, there are regions (or watersheds) of Uttarakhand, where significant agricultural land got converted to bare land. Due to advancement in the field of Remote Sensing and GIS techniques with the use of high-resolution satellite imagery, it has become possible to evaluate before and after scenarios of a landscape. The present study aims at detecting the Land-Use/ Land-Cover change from the year 1993 to 2015 and analysis of possible causes of change using multispectral satellite imagery from Landsat ETM+, Landsat Thematic mapper, and SRTM DEM. The LULC change analysis resultswere evaluated in relation to the geology, slope, and soils of the regionto ascertain possible factors responsible for the change.