Land use/land cover change detection analysis using remote sensing and GIS of Dhanbad district, India

Abstract

Mining and human activities impacted the natural ecosystem leading to land use/land cover (LU/LC) change is ofgreat concern by environmentalist and the society. The present study evaluated the LU/LC changes due toexploitation of coal in Dhanbad district of India during the period of 1987 to 2017. Remote sensing (RS) dataindicated that out of 2043.32 ha LU/LC comprised of dense forest, low dense forest, open scrub, agriculture land,agriculture fallow, barren land, sand, river, water body, built-up and mining, constituted percent values of 8.17,3.11, 39.51, 18.88, 12.69, 1.25, 0.76, 3.12, 2.88, 4.40 and 5.22 in 1987 and 4.69, 6.01, 15.78, 41.36, 9.97, 3.90,2.55, 2.22, 1.43, 7.91, 4.18 in 2017 respectively. The LU/LC indicated that; for 30 years the percent share of denseforest, open scrub, agricultural fallow, river, water body and mining decreased by 42.63, 60.45, 21.47, 28.80,50.37 and 19.85 % respectively. Land use changes were due to harvesting of forest for fuel, shelter and agriculture,construction of residential houses in fallow land, urbanization and sand removal for construction material. Theincrease in low dense forest, agricultural land, barren land, sand and built-up area by 93.38, 119.06, 211.63, 234.96and 79.85 percent respectively were due to shift of land use from forest to open scrub, agricultural fields andbarren lands, new settlement by utilizing sands from river banks making the river stretch wider, open mine pitsconverted into water bodies in the district. These resulted in a considerable change in land use pattern in Dhanbaddistrict, Jharkhand, India.