A Geospatial Approach in the Impact Assessment of Tannery Industries on Upper Palar Basin

Abstract

Environmental degradation and crumbling ecosystem that the human species has wrought upon the mother earth is fast escalating throughout the world and is currently the most debated topic globally. Thanks to the name of economic development, river basins in our ecosystem are vanishing and are under constant threat of being flushed out of their existence. Malattar river sub basin (Upper Palar basin) is a good example of how in the name of economic growth, an environment can be ruined totally. In such a context, an investigation on impact assessment of environment on Malattar river sub basin has been made using Geospatial techniques. The discharging of untreated effluents from tannery industries has turned the upper Palar region to be the worst affected casualty in terms of environmental degradation. The present paper attempts to analyse the effectiveness of GIS, GPS and ERDAS tools to find out the degree of environmental damage undergone by the basin over the past 40 years. The results have been generated through maps prepared from toposheet, landsat and Google earth imageries. The Geomatic study that brought the results shows that the basin is under a high rate of irreversible degradation. The dominancy of tannery industries is highly alarming that, there is a mushrooming of 154.54 percent increase in overall number of tannery units in the study area during the last 40 years, due to which the land use and land cover of the region has changed drastically. Finally it has been analysed that Geospatial technique is an effective measurement for monitoring EIA and environmental degradation process thereby generating qualitative predictions and solutions to overcome the impacts through sustainable development.