Evaluating the impact of land use land cover changes on urban ecosystem services in Nashik, India: a RS-GIS based approach

Abstract

Rapid urbanization poses significant challenges to ecosystem services and environmental integrity. This study presents an integrated geospatial approach to analyze Land Use Land Cover (LULC) changes and their impact on Ecosystem Service Value (ESV) in Nashik, India, from 2017 to 2023. It employs open-source ESRI LULC datasets developed from Sentinel-2 satellite imagery to accurately map built-up areas, forests, agricultural lands, water bodies, and barren lands. ESV estimation utilized the Benefit Transfer Method (BTM) with specific coefficients tailored to different LULC types. Further, an elasticity analysis was conducted to evaluate the responsiveness of ESV to LULC changes, while sensitivity analysis tested the reliability of ESV estimates. From 2017 to 2023, Nashik experienced notable LULC changes: built-up areas expanded by 17.8%, barren lands by 20.1%, and forest cover increased by 59.4%. Meanwhile, agricultural land decreased by 20.1%, and water bodies by 6.5%. These changes resulted in an overall 9.6% decline in ESV, from $3.02 million/ha/year to $2.73 million/ha/year. ESV of water bodies fell from 1.705 to 1.600, forest ESV rose from 0.098 to 0.156, and agricultural ESV declined from 1.215 to 0.971. Elasticity analysis revealed that ESV changes were most sensitive to the expansion of built-up areas and the reduction of agricultural land, while the sensitivity analysis confirmed the robustness of the results, indicating low sensitivity to changes in coefficient values. These results underscore the loss of blue-green spaces and biodiversity due to urban expansion, highlighting the need for regular LULC and ESV assessments for sustainable urban planning and focussed conservation efforts.