Land use land cover change in National Capital Region of India: A remote sensing & GIS based two decadal spatial-temporal analyses

Appropriate location and operation of the developmental activities across different policy zones of National capital Region of India (NCR), to facilitate mutually productive “Centre - Periphery” relationship, requires detailed spatial-temporal mapping and long term change detection analysis of the regional resources of the study area. Scanning of literature revealed that this is acutely lacking for the study area. Hence, the present investigation was primarily aimed at quantifying the spatial-temporal pattern of the Land Use/ Land Cover Change (LULCC) during last two decades (i.e., 1989 to 2006) in the NCR and identifying the major bio-physical factors governing LULCC through modern geo-spatial techniques. Geo-spatial analysis of the above data showed that the study area experienced a steep (67.4%) increase in its croplands during 1989 to 1998 but relatively a small (5.7%) increase during 1998 to 2006 period. This was also associated with a similar steep increase in its built-up areas, due an increase in its urban population, during the same period. The change detection analysis further showed that 1989-1998, associated with change in croplands, change in built-up, ridge and forest lands, change in water-bodies, water levels and rainfall, change in single/ double cropped areas, change in degraded croplands and change in cropping pattern. With comparison of above results and collected socio-economic data in this region, the impact of changing land use & bio-physical/ economic factors on agricultural profitability were analyzed. The result of this study could thus lead to a detailed and lucid spatial-temporal (quantitative) assessment of the major bio-physical factors governing agricultural business – profitability and the overall food security of the National Capital Region. It is expected that the study would go a long way in facilitating better policy making and developing valid change detection methodologies for the National Capital Region and other similar regions of the country.