Land Use - Land Cover Change Analysis of Karur Town - A GIS Approach

Abstract

Land use / Land cover change is one of the most sensitive factors that show the interactions between human activities and the ecological environment. This research study demonstrated the importance of geographical information system and remote sensing technologies in spatial temporal data analysis and also this paper shows a GIS and remote sensing approach for modeling of spatial - temporal pattern of land use and land cover change (LULC) in a fastest growing towns / industrial region of Karur town. QGIS 3.10 version and Arc GIS 10.2 software platforms were utilized in the study for Image processing, LULC mapping and change detection analysis. USGS Earth explorer Landsat series satellite imageries were acquired and LULC maps were prepared for the years 1991, 2000, 2010 and 2020. Supervised classification with maximum likelihood algorithm is adopted for LULC classification. The LULC classes are Built upland, Agricultural land, Barren land and Water body based on NRSA Level – I supervised classification. The Built-up area has drastically increased from 1991 to 2020. It has increased more than double. It was 17 percent in 1991 and increased to 40 percent in 2020. This clearly shows Karur town is the becoming more and more urbanized.