AGRICULTURAL LAND USE CHANGE ANALYSIS USING REMOTE SENSING AND GIS: A CASE STUDY OF ALLAHABAD, INDIA

Abstract. Urbanization is occurring at a fast rate in India. Population residing in urban areas was 11.4% according to the Census of 1901. This percentage has gradually increased to 31.16% according to the Census of 2011. Conversion of agricultural land into non-agricultural uses is the major side effect of urbanization. The objective of this paper is to identify the changes in the agriculture land and its conversion into other Land Use Land Cover (LULC) type. In order to achieve this objective, mapping of land use changes is done by using the GIS and remote sensing. This study utilizes satellite images along with field survey and statistical data to detect the change of farming land into other LULC type in different tehsils of Allahabad district. This study is carried out over the time period of 18 years that ranges from 2000 to 2018. This work provides the detail of expansion and shrinkage of agriculture and open land at tehsil level. Landsat data is used in this work which is open source and freely downloadable. Landsat images of study period i.e. from 2000 to 2018 are downloaded and then preprocessed. Supervised classification of images is performed using Gaussian maximum likelihood technique. The training samples are collected with the help of ground truth information. After this, identification of land use changes is done on pixel by pixel basis. This would find out the LULC class which is primary responsible for the shrinkage of agriculture land. This spatio-temporal and statistical research work will help to construct a base for a sustainable development model.