Assessment of Land Use-Land Cover Changes in Samastipur District of Bihar (India) Using Geo-Informatics

The assessment and analysis of Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) changes are required to identify the land use changes from year to year which plays a critical role in planning and implementation of developmental activities. The present study aims to assess LULC changes in Samastipur district of Bihar using Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographical Information System (GIS). The LULC maps were prepared using LANDSAT-5 and LANDSAT-8 images by adopting object based image classification technique. Assessments of LULC changes were done @ 5 years, @ 10 years and @ 20 years during 2000-2020. The results indicated that the agriculture land coverage increased at high rate during 2000-2005 and 2005-2010; and after that it is increasing at slow rate. The natural vegetation coverage is continuously decreasing during years 2000-2020 while settlement is continuously increasing during this period with notable increase during 2000-2005 and 2015-2020. In the time interval of 10 years (2000-2010), the agriculture land area increased by 22.17%; natural vegetation area decreased by 38.04%; the water-bodies decreased by 46.69%; sand and barren land decreased by 61.27% and settlement area increased by 15.62%. Over the next 10 years (2010-2020), area covered by agriculture land, settlement, water-bodies and sand and barren land increased by 8.05%, 38.30%, 26.27% and 44.65% respectively while area covered by natural vegetation decreased by 75.24%. During time interval of 20 years (2000-2020), agriculture land area and settlement area increased by 32% and 59.91% respectively while natural vegetation, sand and barren land and water-bodies decreased by 84.66%, 43.98% and 32.68% respectively. The analysis of the results indicates that the natural vegetation has decreased at fast rate in the recent years. Therefore, proper attention is required towards stopping of cutting of natural vegetation in the district to save the environment.