Support vector machines for monitoring land use dynamicity and temporal variation of land surface temperature in Kurseong and surrounding of Darjeeling Himalaya

Abstract

Kurseong municipality and it’s surrounding hill slope in the part of Darjeeling Himalayas, one of the major biodiversity hotspots in India. This paper is dealt with the spatio-temporal outline of settlement expansion in Kurseong municipality and its surrounding area. Two land-use land-cover maps for the year 1991 and 2017 were prepared from Landsat images to estimate annual land use change rate using support vector machine model in ArcGis10.3 and Erdas Imagine 2014 software. Two important methods for such application of binary map and posting assessment method were applied in the change in LULC. 5 TM and 8 OLI Landsat images used for analyzing land use/land cover change and its impact on land surface temperature in Kurseong municipality and its surrounding hill slope Darjeeling Himalaya of West Bengal, India. Split window algorithm and spectral radiance model were used for determining land surface temperature with the help of Landsat 8 OLI and Landsat 5 TM, duet on ArcGis10.3. The average change in land surface temperature revealed that the spreading settlement area recorded the highest increase in temperature. The expansion of human settlement or development of communication lines over the surface resulted in the declining of vegetation cover and increased land surface temperature, which can be seen as the Darjeeling Himalaya of the near future, the hill slope in the biodiversity loss.