Monitoring land use/cover change using remote sensing and GIS techniques: A case study of Hawalbagh block, district Almora, Uttarakhand, India

Digital change detection techniques by using multi-temporal satellite imagery helps in understanding landscape dynamics. The present study illustrates the spatio-temporal dynamics of land use/cover of Hawalbagh block of district Almora, Uttarakhand, India. Landsat satellite imageries of two different time periods, i.e., Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) of 1990 and 2010 were acquired by Global Land Cover Facility Site (GLCF) and earth explorer site and quantify the changes in the Hawalbagh block from 1990 to 2010 over a period of 20 years. Supervised classification methodology has been employed using maximum likelihood technique in ERDAS 9.3 Software. The images of the study area were categorized into five different classes namely vegetation, agriculture, barren, built-up and water body. The results indicate that during the last two decades, vegetation and built-up land have been increased by 3.51% (9.39 km2) and 3.55% (9.48 km2) while agriculture, barren land and water body have decreased by 1.52% (4.06 km2), 5.46% (14.59 km2) and 0.08% (0.22 km2), respectively. The paper highlights the importance of digital change detection techniques for nature and location of change of the Hawalbagh block