Land use and Land cover Change in parts of Punjab Satluj Floodplain (India): A Geospatial Analytical Overview from 1975 – 2011

Land use and land cover change in part of Satluj flood plain is the analytical overview of the changing Man - Environment relationship. This research theme includes two important components i.e. land use/land cover change (LULCC) and flood plain, which are having functional interlinkages, as any change in land use and land cover patterns affects the floodplain environment and itself gets affected. Impetus of this research theme includes the analytical description of changing land use and land cover patterns in Satluj floodplain, with the assessment of interlinked relationships, which are generated through anthropogenic and natural processes. These relationships generate variability in land resource utilization, which results into hazardous ecological implications and raise certain sustainability issues.

Analytical inventory of LULCC has been generated in geospatial environment, while analyzing 1975 LANDSAT MSS and 2011 IRS P-6 LISS III images with ancillary data input from Survey of India topographical sheets. LULC change detection patterns and change detection matrix has been generated from resampled mutitemporal classified images, which reflects human interventions in terms of development activities, which accentuates the replacement of natural cover with human use. During 1975, distribution of natural cover versus human use of land was 54.42% and 45.58% respectively, but with advent of increase in population and technological advancement with Government initiatives through Five Year Plans this natural cover shrunk to only 6.5%, whereas human employment on land was expand and contributes 93.5% of this fragile flood prone flood plain area. This imbalanced land resource utilization resulted into the hazardous ecological implications, which tend to be framed under the broad theme of sustainability for reducing the impact factor of raised concerned area specific issues.