Altitudinal Appraisal Of Land Use Land Cover And Surface Temperature Change In The Satluj Basin, India

Abstract

The land use change has affected nearly 32% of the global landscape from 1960 to 2019. Several studies have examined the impacts of land use land cover (LULC) on the surface temperature. Still, the spatiotemporal variation of LULC and LST with altitude is a less researched area. In the current study, we assess the LULC dynamics and its relation to altitudinal LST in the Himalayan Satluj River basin in Himachal Pradesh across the altitudinal range of 332 to 6558 meters. LULC, LST, NDVI, and NDMI were derived from Landsat data for 1980-2020. The spatial pattern was analyzed using Support Vector Machine (SVM) and a mono-window algorithm. The results of LULC denote that snow covered area (SCA) have decreased by nearly 56.19% since 1980 and vegetation cover has increased. However, a decline in vegetation density is pronounced at the same time. The mean surface temperature of the Satluj basin has amplified by 6°C (0.25°C/year) from 1996 to 2020. Mostly Zone 3 and 4 are under high hilly and temperate dry regions in Lahaul Spiti and Kinnaur district of Himachal Pradesh. The most important sign is that the mean surface temperature for Zone 3 (3000m-4500m) and Zone 4 (above 4500m) was the highest increase to 6°C (0.26°C/year) and 8°C (0.31°C/year) from 1996 to 2020. The increase in LST values is attributed to land cover dynamics precisely the decline of snow cover area and the emergence of vegetation zone at higher above the 4500 altitudes. Our study facilitates regional analysis.