ASSESSMENT OF LAND USE AND LAND COVER CHANGES OF DAMDAMA WETLAND, GURUGRAM USING VARIOUS CHANGE DETECTION TECHNIQUESSushma, Neetu Rani and Bratati DeyAbstract Deterioration of water quality, habitat loss, and degradation of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, are serious global environmental concerns. Over the years, wetland ecosystems have undergone significant changes because of human activities particularly urbanization, agriculture, and industrial expansion. The principal objective of this study was to monitor the in and around changes over Damdama wetland using remote sensing and geographic information systems. The Land use and land cover changes in Damdama wetland were analyzed for the period of 2010-2020 for two seasons i.e., pre-monsoon and post-monsoon using ERDAS Imagine version 2014. The classification was based on six different classes i.e., agriculture, barren land, built-up, fallow land, vegetation and water body using maximum-likelihood supervised classification. The resulted Land use and land cover changes map showed an increase of 9.41%, 14.83%, 3.95% and 0.15% in agriculture, barren land, built-up and water body respectively from 2010 to 2020 in pre-monsoon season whereas the fallow land and vegetation decreased by 15.15% and 13.20%. In post-monsoon season barren land, built-up and fallow land increased by 9.6%, 4.13%, and 1.38% respectively whereas agriculture, vegetation and waterbody decreased by 6.5%, 8.42% and 0.19%, respectively. Overall accuracy was found to be 90%, 92% for pre-monsoon and post-monsoon season respectively in the year 2010, while 94% for both the seasons in the year 2020. The results indicated that three different analytical techniques applied to assess the changes showed similar trend. Overall, such transformation may pose a serious threat to wetland ecosystem in future. |