CA MARKOV MODELING OF LAND USE LAND COVER DYNAMICS AND SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS TO IDENTIFY SENSITIVE PARAMETER(S)

Abstract. An attempt has been made to explore, evaluate and identify the sensitive parameter(s) of Cellular Automata Markov chain modeling to monitor and predict the future land use land cover pattern scenario in a part of Brahmaputra River Basin, India. For this purpose, land use land cover maps derived from satellite images of Landsat MSS image of 1987 and Landsat TM image of 1997 were used to predict future land use land cover of 2007 using Cellular Automata Markov model. Sensitivity analysis has been carried out to identify the land use land cover parameter(s), which have the highest, lowest or intermediate influence on predicted results. The validity of the Cellular Automata Markov process for projecting future land use and cover changes in the study area calculates various Kappa Indices of Agreement (Kstandard) which indicate how well the comparison map agrees and disagrees with the reference map (land use land cover map derived from IRS-P6 LISS III image of 2007). The results shows that the land with or without scrub appeared to be most sensitive parameter as it has highest influences on predicted results of land use land cover of 2007. The second most sensitive parameter was lakes / reservoirs / ponds to predict land use land cover of 2007, followed by river, agricultural crop land, plantation, open land, marshy / swampy, sandy area, aquatic vegetation, built up land, dense forest, degraded forest, waterlogged area and agricultural fallow land. The least sensitive parameter is agricultural fallow land, which has minimum influence on predicted results of land use land cover of 2007. The validation of CA Markov land use land cover prediction results shows Kstandard is 0.7928.