Change Detection of Sodic Land in Raebareli District Using Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques

Remote sensing and GIS play a vital role in trend analysis over sodic land and use of alternative measures to minimize the time and cost in reclamation processes. Sodic land is the highly contaminated of salt having pH range of 9.5-10.5 and sodium percentage greater than 15% above which is caused by naturally and anthropogenic. In this study, Raebareli district has been taken as the study area for mapping and monitoring the change detection with respect to sodic lands. LISS III data are used for mapping sodic land in both years 1997 and 2012. The maximum likelihood algorithm method was used for area statistics of different categories of sodic land followed by integration of both the classification of satellite data of Rabi seasons. The Sodic land covers 28823.91 ha area in 1997, which is 8.80% of the total geographical area of the district. At present the total area of sodic lands have been decreased by 18483.60 ha, which covers 10340.31 ha area in 2012, which is 5.64% of the total geographical area of the district. The major changes have been reported mainly in terms of wastelands, fallow land and sodic land areas, which have been reported to decrease over the years.