Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

THREE DECADAL LAND USE AND LAND COVER CHANGES IN THE CAUVERY RIVER BASIN, INDIA

T.R. Kumaraswamy, S.S. Ravishankar and B.C. Nagaraja

Abstract

The Cauvery river basin is one of the most agriculturally intensive basin, has been facing water shortage and climatic variations in the last decade. To understand the influence of human interventions on the natural environment, it is essential to critically examine the changes in land use and land cover over the decades. The objective of this study is to assess land use and land cover change in the Cauvery river basin, for the last three decades using LANDSAT series satellite images. The changes in land use and land cover change were mapped and computed using geospatial techniques. The multitemporal LANDSAT images were classified by supervised maximum likelihood method to generate the corresponding land use/cover maps; the postclassification technique subsequently detected changes in land use and land cover in the river basin. The results of the study revealed a drastic decrease in forest and grassland due to urbanisation, agricultural expansion and other anthropogenic activities.