Assessment of spatial changes of land use/land cover dynamics, using multi-temporal Landsat data in Dadri Block, Gautam Buddh Nagar, India
Abstract: The present work aims at presenting certain important ob-servations on food and water security of the peri-urban environment, by considering field data and satellite image classification to understand the spatial change pattern of natural resources and its impact on agriculture and water resources. Gautam Buddh Nagar is considered one of the important urban areas of the National Capital Region (NCR), being associated with multi-functional activity; it continues to grow in terms of infrastructure and other urban activities and the numerous infrastructural projects and other anthro-pogenic actions in the area cause a rising pressure on water, agriculture, and human health. The Landsat satellite images from 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2016 were classified and used to obtain the Land use / Land cover maps of the area, in order to estimate and to understand the rate of change during the last 16 years. There are mapped the important land use classes, such as the agricultural land, the vegetation surfac-es, the built-up areas, the open land, and the water bodies. The results indicate the fact that during the 16 years taken into study, vegetation (2.26%), water bodies (1.65%), and agriculture (3.5%) undergone a major decline, while the built-up land displayed values increased around four times (from 3.39% to 12.26%). The results of the present work clearly showed that the large-scale changes in natural land cover affected the agriculture, as well as the surface and groundwater resources of the area.