Temporal dynamics of land use land cover (LULC) changes and assessment of environmental and climatic parameters using remote sensing and GIS A case study in Limboti Reservoir, Loha Taluka, Maharashtra, India

In this study, multispectral satellite data from Landsat 4-5 TM and Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS was used to analyse Land Use Land Cover (LULC) change detection and to retrieve environmental parameters. The LULC change detection was done between 2007 and 2021. This study used the supervised classification-maximum likelihood approach in ArcGIS 10.3 software to detect LULC in Loha Taluka, Maharashtra. The taluka was classified into four major LULC classes, viz. water, vegetation, settlement and barren-land. Changes in LULC directly or indirectly will also induce a change in the environmental parameters. Environmental parameters (water surface temperature, chlorophyll-a concentration and total suspended solids) were analysed for Limboti Reservoir. Data were predicted for next two years (2022 and 2023) using multiplicative seasonal decomposition and Holt-Winter's multiplicative method and trends of each parameter were analysed using Mann-Kendall trend method. For both years, vegetative land was the most extensive LC in Loha Taluka, accounting for more than 60% of the total land area. However, throughout these years, urbanisation was rampant and vegetative land was converted to settlement. In these years, open water resources such as reservoirs, lakes and rivers covered a very small percentage of the total area, which is a serious threat to the ecosystem. As a result, proper water body management is essential; otherwise, these resources will be destroyed and will no longer be able to contribute to the area's socioeconomic growth.