Study on Land Use/Land Cover Change Dynamics through Remote Sensing and GIS – A Case Study of Kamrup District, North East India

The study describes the land use and land cover dynamics in Kamrup district of Assam from 1991 to 2011 using remote sensing and Geographical Information System (GIS). Satellite remote sensing and GIS acts as an effective approach for analyzing the direction, rate and spatial pattern of land use dynamics. Landsat-TM and ETM+ for the period 1991, 2001 and 2011 were used to prepare the land use/land cover (LULC) map for different periods. The methodology employed consists of an object-oriented classification approach for LULC mapping and a post-classification change-detection technique for quantifying the changes for twelve major land use and land cover types. The results indicated that severe land cover changes have occurred in built-up (+ 45.82%), wetlands (−39.45%), croplands (+ 4.16%) and forest cover (−3.09%) areas. Most of the areas have been compensated to expansion in areas under built-up and cultivated lands. Keywords:  Change detection, change matrix, land-use, land-cover, accuracy assessment