Changing land use/land cover patterns and growing human population in Wular catchment of Kashmir Valley, India

Abstract

The profound increase in human activities and the degrading scenario in fragile ecosystems of the western Himalayas like that of Wular Lake have highlighted the need to analyze the impact of increasing human population on such environments. Wular Lake, the largest freshwater lake, has under gone/witnessed degradation from the last few decades because of tremendous increase in human population in its catchment area. The present work deals with the land transformation in the Wular lake catchment over a period of 28 years (1991–2018) which represents the specific changes in the classes, majorly like waterbody (− 51.60%), swamps/marshy (− 30.92%), plantation (− 6.34%), dense forest (− 10.56%) and snow cover (− 3.66%). To carry out this study, Landsat-5 (TM) images of 1991, 2001, 2011 and Landsat-8 image of 2018 have been used. The population data for the same time period has also been used to coincide with the study dates. Thereafter, the correlation between the changing LULC and human population has been calculated using Pearson’s correlation (rho ρ). LULC categories like barren/rocky, agriculture, horticulture and settlement showed a positive correlation while the categories like snow cover, waterlogged/swampy, water body, dense forest and plantation showed negative correlation with the growing population.