Land Use Changing Pattern Detection and Analysis in Mymensingh District: A GIS Analysis

The land use pattern of Bangladesh is rapidly changing over the time for climatic changes, population growth, and urbanization as well as changing sub-system of commercial farming. This study aims to examine the trend of land use changes due to transforming rice land into fish farming in three Upazilas of Mymensingh district. The major focus was to see the agricultural land use pattern and the trend in change of land uses. For analyses data, Landsat MSS-1977, TM-2006, TM-2011, and TM-2016 and GIS techniques were used and secondary data were collected from with ERDAS Imagine Software because GIS is the best accuracy method for assessing reference data sets derived from high-resolution satellite data and ground truth field investigation data. Evidence shows that agricultural land of the study area has been decreased by 20.04 % during the past 10 years and at a rate of 2.00 % per year which is more than national level (1.00 %). On the other hand, 13.07 % agricultural land transforming into fish farming in the past 10 years and at a rate of 1.31 % per year due to water logging. The fish farming is more profitable than rice farming as well as seasonal casual labour shortage in the study area, it indicates that traditional agriculture is becoming capital intensive day by day. If this rate continues, the agricultural land will be totally eliminated in future. These land use transformations posed a serious threat to crop land resources. Hence, the realistic land change scenarios may be considered for natural resource management and furnish meaningful decision-making by the policy planners of Government of Bangladesh.