FATE OF AGRICULTURAL AREAS OF KAILALI DISTRICT OF NEPAL: A TEMPORAL LAND USE LAND COVER CHANGE (LUCC) ANALYSIS

Abstract. Changes of agricultural land into non-agricultural land is the main issue of increasing population and urbanization. The objective of this paper is to identify the various land resources and its changes into other Land Use Land Cover (LULC) type. LANDSAT satellite data for 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2018 years of Kailali district Nepal was acquired for supervised LULC mapping and change analysis using ENVI 5.4 software. Sentinel-2 and Google earth satellite data were used for the accuracy assessment of the LULC map. The time-series data analysis from 1990–2000–2010–2018 shows major changes in vegetation and agriculture. The changes in LULC show that settlement and bare land is continuously increasing throughout these years. The change in land use and land cover during the period of 1990–2018 shows that the settlement area is increased by 204%; and agriculture is decreased by 57%. The fluctuating behavior of vegetation, agriculture and water bodies in which the areas decrease and increase over the selected periods is due to natural calamities and migration of the local population. This shows that human influence on the land resources is accelerating and leading to a deterioration of agricultural land. Thus effective agricultural management practices and policies should be carried out at the government level for minimizing land resources degradation by the human-induced impact.