Land Cover Changes and Land Degrading of a Fragile Environment due to Disasters: Reasons and Consequences (Special reference to Samasara Mountain area of Aranayaka, Sri Lanka)

This article discovers reasons and consequences of land cover changes and land degrading of fragile environment due to disaster. In addition, it is based on the Aranayaka area, which is located Kegalle district in Sri Lanka (SL). The study area faced a catastrophic landslide in 2016 and now some extent of this region has been titled as a restricted land to use for the utilization. In 1956, 1982, 1992, 2012 and 2016 Geographic Information System (GIS) had been implemented to aerial view exploration about the land covers of the area. The cartographical data were collected from Land Use and Policy Planning Department (LUPPD) and Survey Department of Sri Lanka and the map analysis were done based on that secondary data. Usually, there are 20-30 years of time series variation but taken 2016 land covers data because of the landslide occurred that year. The study has concentrated natural vegetation cover (NVC) and two manmade land covers (MMLCs) as Tea and Home gardens (HG). Both observational methodology and survey methodology were applied as the combined methodology. Cartographical variation confirmed by ground level study with focus group discussion (FGD), key informant discussion (KIDs) with villagers and applied statistical techniques. Mainly identified considerable contrast changes of tea (T), home gardens (HG) and natural vegetation (NVC) during 1956 -2016. Apart from that, five reasons have been found which cause to land cover changes and found three consequences. The first reason is land changes economic benefits. The second one is less concern about natural vegetation. The third one Political ecological ideas and liberation ecologies play the main part of that land cover changes. The fourth one is less concern physical capability of the land especially in steep slope management and the fifth is institution framework issues. There have three consequences, the first one is soil and land erosion with collapse of the embankment. The second is the villagers income decline and the third one is degrading the artistic value of the environment. This fragile physical structure disturbs with land cover changes and the relevant land preparation and create vulnerability to disaster as landslide and there is a landslide history to alarm for vulnerability