Geospatial analysis of spatio-temporal land transformation and urban expansion in Jammu city

Rapid city growth is reshaping land use and land cover (LULC) across India, yet the long-term direction of these changes remains insufficiently documented for Jammu City. This study examines LULC transformation and urban development in 2002, 2014, and 2024 using Landsat imagery, GIS techniques, and supervised Maximum Likelihood Classification. Six categories were mapped: agricultural land, built-up area, dense vegetation, sparse vegetation, fallow land and water bodies. Independent reference observations and confusion matrices were used to evaluate classification performance. Overall accuracy reached 94.37%, 95.10%, and 96.12%, with Kappa values of 0.919, 0.928, and 0.932 for 2002, 2014, and 2024, respectively. Built-up land expanded from 3,326 ha (23.0%) to 5,825 ha (40.2%), representing an addition of 2,499 ha or 75.1%. Agricultural land initially increased from 6,927 ha (47.8%) in 2002 to 7,854 ha (54.3%) in 2014, then declined to 5,181 ha (35.8%) in 2024. Dense vegetation decreased from 1,367 ha (9.4%) to 734 ha (5.1%), whereas sparse vegetation increased from 1,213 ha (8.4%) to 2,509 ha (17.3%). The findings provide a scientific basis for sustainable urban planning to protect agricultural land, strengthen green infrastructure, and promote informed land-use policies to manage unplanned urban expansion and improve environmental sustainability.