Applying Integrated Approach of GIS and Landscape Metrics for Analyzing Land Use Land Cover Dynamics of Varanasi District, India

By : Nitish Kumar Singh , Geeta Devi , Mahendra Singh Nathawat

Page No: 262-279

Abstract
Traditionally, landscape metrics have been used to study the landscape structure and ensuing changes in its structure over time at different levels. Landscape metrics-based studies have been mainly confined to scientists and researchers of the environment or ecology. It has not been so popular under the subject area of geography as much as among ecologists. Therefore, the use of landscape metrics should be encouraged along with traditional GIS-based land use and land cover studies in geography; so that, as a geographer, we can explore the spatial pattern of land transformations along with its structural nature because only spatial study of changes in the area is not enough, their structure is also important. Keeping the above thought in mind, the present study has attempted to use GISbased supervised classification and landscape metrics in some integrated modus to conduct a spatio-temporal study of the land use and land cover of the Varanasi district from the period of 2000 to 2020. It uses USGS's Landsat ETM + (Year-2000) and OLI (Year-2020) data along with six class-level (CA, NP, MPS, CLUMPY, PLAND, and nLSI) and two landscapelevel (SHIDI, and SIDI) metrics. Therefore, ERDAS v. 2015, ArcGIS v. 10.7, and fragstats v. 4.2 have been used to classify satellite images and calculate landscape metrics. The result shows that the Varanasi district had the maximum decrease in the areas of vegetation cover, water bodies, and agricultural land. In contrast, the maximum increase was observed in built-up land and vacant land. Along with this, there has been a rapid change in the patch structure, shape, and distribution of different land use land covers, so the diversity has increased at the landscape level in the study area.

Authors :
Nitish Kumar Singh : Research Scholar, Discipline of Geography, Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi.
Geeta Devi : Research Scholar, Department of Geography, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi.
Mahendra Singh Nathawat : Professor, Discipline of Geography, Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi.
 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.32381/ATNAGI.2023.43.02.2