ASSESSING FOREST AND AGRICULTRAL LAND UNDER LAND USE CHANGE USING REMOTE SENSING: A CASE STUDY OF BAHAWALPUR CITY (PAKISTAN)

Abstract

Rapid urbanization and development build a great pressure on the agricultural land in urban and semi-urban areas. As a result, there is reduction in agricultural and forest areas in different cities of the developing countries. The present study was conducted in Bahawalpur district of Pakistan. Six remote sensing satellite images of Landsat Enhanced Thermal Mapper and ETM+ were obtained from Global Land Cover Facility of United States Geological Survey’s Earth Explorer and GLOVISE with an interval of three years from 2003 to 2018 (16 years) were processed for the study area (Bahawalpur City). Major land use classes identified for this study included forest, agriculture, barren and urban. Temporal changes of the four land use classes were detected and its impact on covered area by each land use class over the study period was computed. Results indicated that acreage of forest and barren land was decreased by 89.3% and 57.6%, respectively, while that of agriculture and urban area was increased by 34.5% and 45.5%, respectively, over the period of sixteen years from 2003 to 2018. These changes in land use cover might be owing to urbanization, deforestation and land conversion in the study area.