Dynamics of land-use/land cover changes in upper Jhelum catchment of Kashmir Himalayas, India

The increasing population pressures and anthropogenic changes have more frequently led to the alterations in the hydrological regimes across the world.These stressors have drastically affected the feedback systems both at watershed level and the compounding impacts being felt across the bio-physical environments. The present study attempts to analyse the impacts of land use/land cover changes on the hydrological patterns of Upper Jhelum catchment of river Jhelum. A 13-year period of study has been analysed from 1992 to 2015, with the aid of geo-statistical and geospatial approaches.The major decrease was recorded in agricultural and dense forest categories.. The findings further register a decreasing trend in the dense forests with other areas of natural land cover including water-bodies, scrubs and glaciers manifesting overall decrease. The accuracy assessment for the year 1992 revealed that the image has an overall accuracy of 95% while as for the year 2015 it is 97%. These aberrations in the natural bio-physical systems being largely accelerated by stressors ranging from natural to human induced ones have a cumulative bearing on the overall environmental and social balance. This demands a thorough and action-oriented policy re-evaluation being carried in Kashmir Himalayas for the ecological and sustainable development of the region. The humanenvironment interface studies need to be prioritised with the much added emphasis on adaptation and the well-balanced planning for the long term bio-environment security.