Analysis of Land Use/Land Cover Change in Jammu District Using Geospatial Techniques

Rapid and extensive modifications of land use/land cover changes due to accelerated human activities have been a major cause of global environmental change in the last one decade. During the past 10 years, humans changed these landscapes to meet the growing demand for food, fodder, timber and fuel more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time. The change is mainly because of shifting to horticulture and agriculture plantations, which are economically beneficial and also due to increasing pressure of population resulting in to a lot of residential and commercial developments. It is an important component for developmental, planning and management activities. The analysis of the district is done by using supervised classification method, under which land use/ land cover is categorised into nine categories viz. Crops, Forests, builtup, Plantation, Scrubs, Fellow land, Water bodies, Barren land and Dry streams. For understanding the impacts of changing physical characteristics on land, geospatial tools like remote sensing and GIS have been useful.