Assessment of the impact of land use change on natural resource land of Srinagar Metropolitan Region of Kashmir Valley

Abstract

Land is the basic natural resource that provides habitat and sustenance for living organisms, as well as being a major focus of economic activities. It is a finite resource and put to many competing uses. In India land is a source of livelihood for 60 % of the population through agriculture and related activities. Urbanization and resultant population growth has led to the consequent demand for land, water and biological resources and has put tremendous pressure on land. The objective of this paper is to document how this urbanization process has expanded throughout the study area and to explore how lands comprising the natural resource base, particularly agriculture and wetlands were lost and replaced by a matrix of the built and other uses of urban demand. The present study was carried out by making use of two time land use/ land cover maps of 1971 and 2010 and associated change due to urbanization was calculated. An extensive accuracy assessments of the satellite-derived maps was conducted, most of which were produced by using widely available multi-temporal Landsat imagery. The change in urbanization was derived from built-up expansion maps (the built environment) for 1971 and 2010, from which the loss in agricultural and wetland resource lands that occurred during the last forty years were calculated. The analysis revealed that there is a fast intrusion of urban activities in the agricultural landscape of the peri-urban areas. Further, wetlands are at the verge of extinction owing to their high susceptibility to encroachment which has not only resulted in threat to their ecology but also reduced their capacity as flood absorption basin.