Land Use Land Cover Dynamics around a Western Himalayan Wetland using Geospatial Techniques

Despite having multitude of environmental advantages, wetlands are facing serious anthropogenic threats due to changes in the surrounding area. Therefore, the present investigation has been conducted to evaluate the landuse land cover (LULC) around a 6 km buffer strip of Nowgam wetland located in Kashmir valley. The detection of Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) changes was conducted using Landsat imagery within ArcGIS, spanning a 22-year period from 2000 to 2022. The Landsat imageries of three years (2000, 2010 and 2022) were classified using the supervised classification algorithm (maximum likelihood classification) in ArcGIS. Five LULC classes, viz., water, agriculture, settlement, vegetation and bareland were identified in the study region. The exploration of the classified images revealed the area under water decreased by about 56% while as area under agriculture and settlement increased by 44.7% and 30.9%, respectively. The area under vegetation decreased by 7.3% and area under bareland increased by 8.0%. The outcomes of the present discourse reveal that the changes in LULC around the Nowgam wetland are mostly anthropogenic which may pose serious threat to wetland ecosystem in near future. The present study provides a baseline data regarding ecosystem transformations and acts as an important stimulus for all the stakeholders of wetland in planning and implementation of the strategic conservational measures in Nowgam wetland (Bandipora).