Use of GIS and RS Tools for Analysis of Land Use Land Cover and Land Surface Temperature: A Case Study of District Khairpur, Pakistan

Abstract

Land use and land cover (LULC) monitoring plays an important role in sustainable planning and management of resources. This research focuses on analysing historical LULC changes over the Khairpur district of Sindh province of Pakistan. Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System (RS & GIS) tools have been employed using the maximum likelihood algorithm of the supervised classification method. Temporal data of the latest high-resolution satellite imagery provided by NASA GLCF (Global Land Cover Facility), Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI), and Landsat 4, 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) for 2001, 2010, 2015, and 2020 were acquired from Earth Explorer of United States Geological Survey (USGS). The study area is classified into four major classes namely Barren Land, Vegetation, Built-up areas, and Water Bodies. Analysis revealed that for 2001 and 2005 there was no change in barren land area, whereas in 2010 slight decrease in barren land was found which further decreased for the analysis period of 2020, overall barren land class decreased at a rate of 07% (i.e., 74% to 67%) during the analysis period. Also, vegetation and water bodies classes experienced variations throughout the analysis period, however built-up areas showed constant increase throughout the analysis period where built-up area classes increased from 9% to 15%. Whereas land surface temperature (LST) throughout the analysis period showed increasing trends, for both high ranges and low ranges. It was analysed that the areas having dominancy of the barren land class experienced the highest temperature ranges whereas low temperature ranges were discernible in the areas having vegetation covers. It can be concluded from the study that barren land covers the major area of the study area and there is an increase in built-up areas which can further enhance the LST in the study area.