Abstract
One of the detailed and useful ways to develop land use classification maps is use of geospatial techniques such as remote sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS). It vastly improves the selection of areas designated as agricultural, industrial and/or urban sector of a region. In Islamabad city and its surroundings, change in land use has been observed and new developments (agriculture, commercial, industrial and urban) are emerging every day. Thus, the rationale of this study was to evaluate land use/cover changes in Islamabad from 1992 to 2012. Quantification of spatial and temporal dynamics of land use/cover changes was accomplished by using two satellite images, and classifying them via supervised classification algorithm and finally applying post-classification change detection technique in GIS. The increase was observed in agricultural area, built-up area and water body from 1992 to 2012. On the other hand forest and barren area followed a declining trend. The driving force behind this change was economic development, climate change and population growth. Rapid urbanization and deforestation resulted in a wide range of environmental impacts, including degraded habitat quality.
Highlights
The modification of Earth’s terrestrial surface by human activities is commonly known as Land use/land cover change (LULCC) around the globe
Data acquisition In order to study LULC changes in a city like Islamabad, two multispectral satellite images of city were acquired for two Epochs; 1992 and 2012. 1992 and 2012 images (LANDSAT) were obtained for the month of October from United States Geological Survey (USGS), an Earth Science Data Interface and SUPARCO respectively
Tripathi and Kumar (2012) analyzed the LULC dynamics in Takula Block (Uttarakand) by using modern geospatial techniques of remote sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS) and the results revealed that forest decreased by 6.28 % from 1999 to 2005
Summary
The modification of Earth’s terrestrial surface by human activities is commonly known as Land use/land cover change (LULCC) around the globe. Modification of land by humans to obtain livelihoods and other essentials has been there for thousands of years, the extent, intensity and rate of LULCC are far greater than were in the past These changes are driving forces for local, regional and global level unprecedented changes in ecosystems and environmental processes. At the same time, according to Lambin (1997) in the past decades, a major project to study land use change has emerged as an international initiative and has gained great impetus in its efforts to understand forces driving land use change These efforts have stimulated the interest of researchers to apply various techniques to detect and further model environmental dynamics at different levels
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