Land Use/Land Cover Changes over a District in Northern India using Remote Sensing and GIS and their Impact on Society and Environment

This study focuses on exploring changes in Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) over Baramulla district of Kashmir using remote sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS). Linkage of LULC with evapotranspiration and precipitation is also explored in this paper. LULC were categorised into dense forest, sparse forest, water body and other classes by using geospatial satellite data from Landsat for the years 1979, 2001 to 2018. The dense forest and water body show decrease in extent from 1979 to 2018. A decrease of about 27 % has been reported from 1979 to 2018 in dense forest. Furthermore, water body shows a reduction of about 36% during the same time span. Significant changes in dense forest and water body affected the water cycle of the region. Reduction in dense forest and water body resulted in significant decrease in evapotranspiration which caused reduction in precipitation over the study area. Reduced precipitation over study area caused conversion from agriculture to horticulture. Increase of about 55% in horticulture has been reported with decrease of about 54% in agriculture over study area. Evapotranspiration from reanalysis shows coherent variation with precipitation from India Meteorological Department (IMD) gridded product. A decadal decrease of about 0.5% in evapotranspiration resulting in decrease of about 0.38% in precipitation over study area is reported. Increased horticulture causes increase in black carbon due to increased biomass which results in increased warming over study area. Changes reported in this study may cause a significant socioeconomic and environmental impact over Baramulla.