Analysis of land development potential using remote sensing for Kangra District, Himachal Pradesh, India.

Kangra is one of the twelve districts in the state of Himachal Pradesh, India. It has the geographical area of 5,739 sq.km. which becomes 7088.43 sq.km when the terrain is also considered. It is further divides into 21 sub-districts (or Tehsils). For this study the tehsils of Kangra district are compared using a Land development index formulated with relation to the land use land cover characteristics to finally evaluate their individual development potential. The land use land cover (LULC) was analyzed using the 2015-16 data as prepared by the National Remote Sensing Centre, Hyderabad from the Multi-temporal satellite data from Resourcesat-2 LISS III. The topographical maps were also created using the State’s Bhuvan (Indian Geoportal of ISRO) map along with Google maps. The land covers were analyzed under the categories of forest cover, non-agricultural uses, bar-ren/cultivable land, grass/grazing, wastelands, net sown area – agricultural land and misc. land cover. The predominant landcover for the district is forest cover (34.3%) followed by agricultural and crop land (29.5%). According to the comparative study Multan, Khudian, Borah and Jaswan tehsils show the lowest level of development with the maximum wasteland areas and lowest agricultural land while that Indora, Nagrota Bhagwan, Dehra Gopipur, Nurpur, Jawali, Harchakian, Dharamshala and Jawalamukhi show the highest level of development with con-tributing factors of higher built-up land and lower grazing land cover. The tehsils Shahpur, Kangra, Palampur, Thural, Fatehpur, Rakkar, Dhira, Jaidinghpur and Baijnath show an average level of development with varying figures of land use land cover