Abstract
Land transformation is caused by natural as well as anthropogenic driving forces and its impact on the regional environment is a key issue in understanding the relationship between society and the environment. Here, we investigate Land Use Land Cover (LULC) change over four decades, based on Landsat satellite imagery for 1987, 1997, 2007 and 2017, for the Barddhaman district of West Bengal, India. In total, six land use and land cover types have been identified. Over the period in question, there are notable increases in the area under built-up land, plantations and water bodies, whereas there has been a marked decrease in forest cover, agricultural land, and in bare land. The diverse effects of land transformation on the natural environment have been assessed using Land Surface Temperature (LST), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI),Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), Leaf Area Index (LAI), Effective Roughness Length (ERL) and Surface Albedo (SA).Overall, mean annual LST increased by 2.91°C during the study period, while there were reduced values for vegetation indices and an increase in the water index over the period 1987 to 2017. LAI and ERL both exhibit notable decreases, although the pattern was not uniform across the study area. For example, LAI values increased over time in the Kalna, Memari, Jamalpur, Ausgram and Kanksa regions. In Faridpur-Durgapur, Raniganj, Asansol and Raina, increases in surface albedo and ERL were more marked than in other regions. Negative correlations are found between LST-NDVI and NDVI-NDWI, while there is no correlation between LST and NDWI. During the period 1987-2017, NDVI values have declined, although the NDWI shows no clear trend. Land use land cover change is shown to have had a series of negative impacts on the environment of the Barddhaman district. In response, technological, economic, policy, or legislation measures are needed to restore degraded ecosystem services in the district as well as other areas where similar impacts are experienced.
Highlights
Land use change, land cover conversion and land use management interventions have greatly altered a large proportion of the earth’s surface to meet increasing demands for natural resources (Vitousek, 1997; Foley et al, 2005; Rahman et al, 2012; Song et al, 2018)
Surface albedo and Effective Roughness Length (ERL) were calculated with time averaged 0.25◦ data sets taken from the OMI model, Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, NASA, whereas MODIS 8 day time-averaged data at 250 m resolution were obtained for Leaf Area Index (LAI)
Kappa accuracy assessment is carried out to reflect the difference between actual agreement and the agreement expected by chance, and is an important statistical method in the process of analyzing remote sensing quantitative data (Congalton, 2004)
Summary
Land cover conversion and land use management interventions have greatly altered a large proportion of the earth’s surface to meet increasing demands for natural resources (Vitousek, 1997; Foley et al, 2005; Rahman et al, 2012; Song et al, 2018). Others have used remote sensing or census data to describe land use and land cover change arising from urban and industrial expansion (Sikdar et al, 2004; Chatterjee et al, 2012; Gupta and Roy, 2012; Banerjee, 2013). None of these studies has far considered the impact of land use and land cover change on the range of environmental indicators that are the focus of this study
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