Human Induced Land Use / Land Cover Changes in Northern Part of Gurgaon District, Haryana, India: Natural Resources Census Concept

ABSTRACT There is tremendous pressure on the natural resources due to increasing population. To meet the demands of large population means the need for more food production, more requirement of energy, more water requirement, better civic amenities for a reasonable quality of urban life, more infrastructure development to sustain increasing pressure and increased per-capita expenditure for maintaining quality of life. Land resources being finite imply more judicious use of land resources to meet the ever-increasing demands. The unsustainable and unplanned exploitation of land resources is the major reason for degradation of our environment. The main issue is to bring a balance between economic development and conservation of resources, which is possible by proper inventory, and management of these resources on periodic basis. Recent technologies of Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) have made it feasible and cost effective. Present study deals with RS and GIS based monitoring of land use / land cover changes in northern part of Gurgaon District, Haryana. Total area unde