Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

LAND USE AND LAND COVER DETECTION USING GEO-SPATIAL TOOLS FOR SUSTAINABLE LAND USE PLANNING

Gulap Sonowal and Gitika Thakuriah

Abstract

Land use and land cover maps describe the landscape of a particular area by assigning each land unit to a specific category or class, such as settlement, vegetation, cropland etc. When Land use/land cover maps are completed it can be used to describe the land utilisation pattern of municipalities, accounts stages or regions. Land use and land cover helps in many way for planning purposes management and protection of environmental resources. This paper is based on secondary data used of remote sensing satellites imagery and geospatial tools. In this paper, analysis is done using Spatial versus Non-spatial model. Spatial models aim at spatially explicit representations of land-use change at some level of spatial detail, in which land-use change is indicated for individual pixels in a raster or other spatial entities such as administrative units. The group of non-spatial models focuses on modelling the rate and magnitude of land-use change without specific attention for its spatial distribution. After comparative analysis, it is made that the land use category of various classes has undergone many changes from past to contemporary period due to involvement of natural and cultural activities. Crop land and Forest land use and land cover loss their rate of changes to a great extent, and it’s a continuous process all over the world because of conversion of crop land and forest cover into human settlement, human activities in terms of social, economic, political, cultural and environmental issues. On the other hand Settlement, Sand bar, River, Tea garden land use and land cover gain in their rate of area. Usually crop land are converted to activities land, River and sand bar also play an important role in gaining of their rate of increase in land area. It is a natural process, where river expand their bank with great extent causing tremendous changes in the landscapes by bringing changes in erosion and deposition features. If this will continue in this way, it will impact on the functions of the ecosystems, and it will affect the provision, regulations and supporting systems of the ecosystems. Therefore, Land use and land cover changes can lead to interventions and strategic planning in order to maintain sustainability of an ecosystem.