High resolution satellite data for land use/land cover mapping in Rohtak district Haryana, India

The land use/land cover of planned and unplanned residential area is very important for decision making of sustainable land use planning at both national and regional levels. Identification of land cover establishes the baseline form which monitoring activities can provides the ground cover information for baseline thematic maps. An attempt has been made to study the land use/land cover of Rohtak district having a total geographic area of 1672.92 sq. km using eight band high resolution satellite data of WORLD VIEW-2. The satellite images were rectified and georeferenced using master image of cartosat-1 orthorectified image. The main objectives of the study were to analyze and interpret satellite data for Land Use/Land Cover mapping and to generate geo-database of the district in GIS format. The base map of the study area was prepared using Survey of India Toposheets. The base map was used to prepare thematic map on it. A field survey was also conducted to verify the doubtful features in the satellite image. Land use/Land cover categories identified in this area were Agricultural crop land, Plantation, Wastelands, Built-up area & water body.