Changes in land use/cover using geospatial techniques: A case study of Ramnagar town area, district Nainital, Uttarakhand, India

The present study illustrates an integrated approach of remote sensing and GIS (Geographical Information System), i.e., Geospatial techniques for assessment of land use/cover dynamics of a town located in the foothill zone of the Uttarakhand State viz., the Ramnagar. Landsat satellite imageries of two different time periods, i.e., Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) of 1990 and 2010 were acquired by USGS Earth Explorer and quantified the land use/cover changes in the Ramnagar town from 1990 to 2010 over a period of two decades. Supervised Classification methodology has been employed using Maximum Likelihood Technique in ERDAS 9.3. The images of the study area were categorized into five different classes, viz. built-up area, vegetation, agricultural land, water bodies and sand bar. The results indicate that during the last two decades, built-up area and sand bar of the Ramnagar town area have been increased about 8.88% (i.e., 2.83 km2) and 3.98% (i.e., 1.27 km2), respectively, while area under other land categories such as vegetation, agricultural land and water body have decreased about 9.41% (i.e., 3.00 km2), 0.69% (i.e., 0.22 km2) and 2.76% (i.e. 0.88 km2), respectively. The study reveals that the Ramnagar town is expanding maximum towards the southern direction along the National Highway-121. The paper also highlights the importance of digital change detection techniques for nature and location of change of the Ramnagar Town area.