Spatio-Temporal Changes on Land Use/Land Cover in Vaippar Basin, Tamil Nadu Using Geoinformatics Approach

The present study was conducted to find out the land use/land cover changes in Vaippar River basin situated in Madurai, Virudhunagar, Thoothukudi, and Tirunelveli Districts of Tamil Nadu State. The total extent of the study area is 3, 532 sq. km. for the spatio-temporal study, Bhuvan Image layer 2005-06 and the satellite image of IRS LISS III 2011-12 were used to demarcate the land use/land cover categories. Geoinformatics technology has used to classify the land use/land cover categories and to detect the changes occurred during the above mentioned periods. Overlay technique is applied to find out the difference in land utilization pattern in the years 2005-2006 and 2011-12. The analysis conclude that the agriculture croplands 11 % and built-up land by 0.21 % categories have increased in the year 2011-12 when compared to the year 2005-06. It is clearly understood that urbanization is gradually grabbing all natural land uses which results in depletion of various other categories. Urban expansion has brought serious losses of agriculture land and vegetation.