Land use land cover studies are an important component to understand human interaction with ecosystem and environment thereby making it essential to detect the changes so as to maintain a sustainable environment and biodiversity. The present study was under taken in semi arid region of Karnataka to understand the land use land cover changes over a period of time with the help GIS and remote sensing technology. The data was analyzed in two points of time from 1990 and 2015. The analysis was carried using survey of India toposheets, thematic imagery and satellite images with the help of Arc GIS software. The results showed that the forest ecosystem and vegetation has reduced by almost 1.53 percent, crop land has decreased by approximately 11.52 percent and fallow land has increased extensively at 17.43 percent. The built-up areas showed a negligible increase of approximately 0.49 percent as compared to 1990s. Simultaneously, a negligible reduction in area under water bodies (0.47 percent) was observed. Furthermore, a decrease of approximately 4.4 percent was observed for area under barren land/grass land primarily due to agricultural activates. The result indicates the decrease in vegetation cover year by year due to human activities.
