Application of Remote Sensing and GIS in Wetland Monitoring and Management Using Landsat Images

Wetland, an ecosystem of utmost importance, providing numerous beneficial resources to both flora and fauna is the most vital component of our environment. Wetlands perform a range of environmental functions and provide numerous socio-economic benefits to the local communities. Due to increased anthropogenic pressure the fragile yet diverse ecosystem is under constant threat requiring comprehensive monitoring in order to identify and analyze the changes occurring in the wetland area. Thus, the present research was conducted to study and visualize the spatio-temporal changes occurring in the wetland and upland areas in Renuka wetland, a Ramsar site since 2005 by Land Use and Land Cover Change (LULCC). The study focuses on monitoring the status of changes taking place in land use and land cover in the area (pre-Ramsar, 1994, 2000 and post-Ramsar, 2010, 2018) using Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System (GIS). For conducting the study, identification and delineation of five major classes' viz., forest, agriculture, water, barren and built-up was carried out using Google Earth Engine and Quantum GIS using LANDSAT images for four different years (1994, 2000 and 2010, 2018). LULC maps identifying the seasonal changes for the years 1994 and 2018 and annual changes in the area were generated for pre-Ramsar (1994, 2000) and post-Ramsar years (2010, 2018). From the land use and land cover classification it was concluded that there has been a dynamic change in the extent of urban area and the dependency on natural resources in the wetland area has increased. Urbanization and other activities are major cause for the change, thereby requiring concerted management strategies and constant monitoring. The study also suggested that remote sensing and GIS is an efficient tool for studying the variation across various seasons and years as it helped in identifying the past and present scenarios in the area which will further help in decision making and will provide options for better and efficient designing of monitoring programs. Also, the study proved that the remote sensing and GIS tools are helping in simplification and visualization by incorporating datasets and easing the study of complex ecological processes.