A Hypsometric Analysis Of Land Use/Land Cover Change In Anantnag District Of Kashmir Himalayas

Research Article
Sheraz Ahmad Lone., Arif H Shah and Ishtiaq Ahmad Mayer
DOI: 
xxx-xxxxx-xxxx
Subject: 
science
KeyWords: 
Land use, Land cover, Horticulture,
Abstract: 

Land Use Land Cover (LULC) change analysis assists decision makers to ensure sustainable development and to understand the dynamics of our changing environment. During the past one decade the study area has undergone many LULC changes due to rapid urban growth, poorly planned infrastructural development and attitude towards horticulture due to economic reasons. This study was proposed to detect LULC changes and to investigate the major factors that have caused these changes. For LULC change detection and analysis temporal Landsat satellite data captured by Thematic Mapper (TM) were employed. Maximum Likelihood (MLH) supervised classification algorithm was applied to classify the study area, whereas, Post Classification Comparison (PCC) approach was adopted to analyze the LULC changes. Results revealed that over a period of 10 years, a decrease has taken place in agriculture and forest at a change rate of -3.7 % and -2.26 % respectively. On the other hand, horticulture, built up have increased at a rate of 2.17 % and 1.13 % respectively