Land use/Land cover Change Detection Study in Vythiri Taluk, Wayanad District, Kerala using Geospatial Technology

Abstract

Mapping and monitoring the land use/land cover (LU/LC) changes in the Vythiri taluk of Wayanad district are essential for sustainable improvement and management. Remote sensing and GIS technology are used to track the changes in land use/ land cover of Vythiri taluk of Wayanad district for the year 2015–2021. Images from Landsat-8 data were used to generate LU/LC maps. The maximum likelihood supervised classification approach was used to produce the signature class of the important land use/ land cover category. Six major land use/ land cover classes were noticed viz. agricultural land, barren land, built-up area, forest, grassland and water body. The land use/ land cover changes in the results show that built-up area and grassland have increased by 19% (115km2) and 25% (18.1km2), while agricultural land and barren land have decreased by 7% (39.4km2) and 15% (93.3km2) respectively. The area of forest land and water bodies has shown no changes. The overall accuracy of the study is 80%, 83.3% and 83.3% and Kappa Coefficient is 75.8%, 79.5%, 79.2% for the years 2015, 2018 and 2021 respectively. The analyses reveal that land use/ land cover is changed continuously due to population growth, urbanization and natural disasters like flooding and landslides. Google earth images are also used to detect the land cover changes in the study area. The outcome of the study is helpful to policymakers for sustainable land use/land cover management in the Vythiri taluk of Wayanad district, Kerala, South India.