Quantifying land use and land cover change using geographic information system: A case study of Srinagar city, Jammu and Kashmir, India

Land use/land cover change study is very important aspect of the natural resources data base study. The knowledge of land use and land cover is important for many planning and management activities as it is considered as an essential element for modeling and understanding the earth's features. The pressure of urbanization on Srinagar city can be drawn from the fact that the city had an area of 12.8 km² in 1901which increased to 82.88 km² in 1971 to 270 km² in 2001. The present study investigates the land transformation of Srinagar city located in the heart of the Himalayan mountain system in Kashmir valley. Urban expansion of Srinagar city and land transformation has severely affected the aerial extent of agricultural land, water bodies, marsh area etc. Srinagar city is ten times larger in population than the second urban centre of Anantnag (Primacy index= 9.95 in two city index) depicting its command over the region.

Land information system plays a very vital role in managing the land resources of any area. For understanding the impacts of changing physical characteristics on land, geospatial tools like remote sensing and GIS have been useful. Therefore, in order to have a better understanding of the land use/land cover change around Srinagar city, topographic and a multispectral remote sensing data was used to analyze the change around the city.