Impact of change of land use on ecosystem services

Land is delineated part of earth’s surface mostly covered with river, mountains, desert and swamps etc. Land use involves management and modification of natural environment or wilderness into built environment while land use changes is a process by which human activities transform the natural landscape for economic activities, classifying land according to their use. Land-use change has broad lines of impact, with a potential for influencing economic growth, quality of life, management of environmental resources, and national food supply. There are many driving forces behind land use changes like industrialization, urbanization, deforestation, increasing population which is putting extra pressure on our land hence lead to decline in various ecosystem services like provisioning services, regulating services, cultural services and supporting services and loss of biodiversity takes place due to changing land use pattern and also deteriorating the ground water quality. While land use changes also lead to development of economy by establishing industries, various power projects thus providing large number of employment and help in developing the economy of country. Therefore, it is important to assess the impact of change of land use with respect to ecosystem services so as to implement appropriate land uses that enhances ecosystem services.