Mapping of Land Use/Land Cover Changes in Upper Ponnaiyar Watershed, Tamil Nadu: A Remote Sensing and GIS Approach

Abstract

Land use and land cover is an important element in understanding the interactions of human activities with the environment and thus it is necessary to assess changes. Experiential observation revealed that changes have occurred in land use/land cover and hence an attempt is made to study the changes in land use and land cover in upper Ponnaiyar river basin over a period of 40 years (1973–2013). The study carried out using LAND SAT imageries of Thematic Mapper of 1973, Thematic Mapper of 1992, Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM) of 2006 and Cartosat image of 2013. Ground truth observations were also done to improve the accuracy of the classification. Finally, it was observed that the area under crop land was decreased due to quarry, industrial and real estate activities in the study area.

Keywords: Land use/land cover, thematic mapper, visual image interpretation, GIS