Volume 13 | Issue 4
Volume 13 | Issue 4
Volume 13 | Issue 4
Volume 13 | Issue 4
Volume 13 | Issue 4
Understanding land use and land cover changes has become a necessity in managing and monitoring natural resources and development. Remote sensing and geographical information system jointly known as Geo-Spatial technologies are proven tools for assessing land use and land cover changes that help planners to advance sustainability. This requires the present and past land use/land cover information of the area. LULC maps also help us to study the changes that are happening in our ecosystem and environment. If we have an inch by inch information about Land Use/Land Cover of the study unit we can make policies and launch programmes to save our environment. Present study used Geo-Spatial technologies to detect and predict land use and land cover changes in District Bilaspur in Himachal Pradesh India. Multi-temporal satellite images of 1989, 1999, 2009 and 2019 were pre-processed, geo-referenced, and mapped using the supervised maximum likelihood classification to examine land use and land cover changes. The change detection examined decadal basis i.e. 1989-1999, 1999-2009 and from 2009-2019 and also for the period from 1989-2019 as a whole. We found that over a period of 30 years (from 1989 to 2019), the Bilaspur district has lost 5.24% of its forests, 8.03% of its pastures and open land. The gain of 5.16% in agricultural and horticulture land, 5.31% gain in built up area observed. The highest gain in built up area is due to rapid constructional activities in rural and urban areas as well construction of roads is another factor. These changes are associated with loss of ecosystem which will negatively impact human and also the environment of the study area. We recommend planners to mainstream ecosystem-based adaptation and plans supported by strong policy and funds.