Temporal dynamics change of land use/land cover in Jhansi district of Uttar Pradesh over past 20 years using LANDSAT TM, ETM+ and OLI sensors

Mapping and monitoring land use land cover (LULC) dynamics is vital for sustainable land development, planning and management. Using advanced techniques of remote sensing (RS) and geographic information system (GIS), the present study is an effort to monitor the changes in LULC patterns of Jhansi District of Uttar Pradesh for the periods 2000-2010 and 2010-2020. Satellite images from Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper (TM) for 2001; Landsat-7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) for 2010 and Landsat 8 (OLI) for 2020 were used to extract Land use/Land cover classes. Supervised classification using Maximum Likelihood Classifier (MLC) was applied to monitor LULC of the study area. Six major LULC classes viz; cropland, fallow/barren land, built-up area, water bodies and forest have been identified and showed that major land use in the district is crop land. The accuracy assessment of the classified map was done using 256 random points distributed all over the image. Results indicated that LULC in Jhansi district has undergone a series of changes over the past two decades. Results showed that crop land, built-up area and water bodies have increased by 27.16% (1367.26 Km(2)), 0.58% (29.4 Km(2)) and 0.3% (15.26 Km(2)), respectively while fallow/barren land and forest have decreased by 27.55% (1386.58 Km(2)), and 0.5% (25.34 Km(2)), respectively. The research revealed that substantial shift from fallow/ barren land (27.55%) into crop land. The analysis and findings of this study facilitate researchers, policy makers, land use planners and managers to implement the appropriate land-use management plan for Jhansi district.