Detection Of Change In Land Cover In Jabalpur District From 1991-2021 Using Remote Sensing

Abstract Land use/ land cover is an important component in understanding the interactions of human activities with the environment and thus it is necessary to monitor and detect the changes to maintain a sustainable environment. In this paper, an attempt has been made to study the changes in land use and land cover of Jabalpur district in the last 4 decades from 1991 to 2021 classifying majorly in Forest (Medium to Dense), Trees, Waterbody, Settlements & Agricultural fields. The study was carried out through the Remote Sensing and GIS approach using High-resolution Imagery from Google Earth, and LANDSAT 8, 7, 5 imagery of 2021, 2011, 2001, 1991 respectively. The land use/land cover classification was performed based on the Supervised Classification approach available in ArcGIS. GIS software is used to prepare the thematic maps and ground truth observations were also performed to check the accuracy of the classification. The present study has brought out that the Tree cover has been decreased from 12.97–5.40% during 1991-2021 showing a considerable decrease in Forest area as well. The settlement area increased from 4.26% in 1991 to 12.46% in 2021. The areas under natural streams, have shown no significant change and can be considered as a positive sign for sustainable development.