Assessing Land Use /Land Cover Changes in Parts of Chandrapur District, Wardha Valley Coalfield, Maharashtra Using Geospatial Techniques

Wardha valley coalfield of Central India is one of the major coalfields which fulfils the requirement of coal in Maharashtra and other adjoining states. Chandrapur district falls within the Wardha valley coalfield covering an area of 11,364 km 2 . The district has its economic and industrial importance due to availability of coal reserves, which contributes to core sector of India with both open and underground mining. An attempt has been made to assess the land use/cover changes in parts Wardha valley coalfield, Chandrapur district using multi-temporal satellite data. Survey of India toposheets (55P/8 and 56M/5) have been used for preparation of base map, whereas multi-temporal satellite data of LANDSAT 5 (TM), IRS 1D LISS III and IRS P6 LISS III corresponding to 1991, 2001 and 2011, respectively have been utilized for LU/LC mapping and change detection. Visual interpretation technique has been followed to delineate LU/LC categories supplemented with ground truth verification /field work. Satellite data interpretation led to the identification and delineation of 14 land use/cover categories, namely dense forest, degraded forest, open scrub, plantation, cultivated land, uncultivated land, waste land, mining area, overburden dumps, thermal power plant, industrial area, settlement/built-up, water body and dry river. Arc GIS has been used for digitization, editing, computation and generating vital statistics. The analysis of LU/LC statistics suggests that area has undergone significant land use/cover changes during two decades (1991–2011) due to increasing mining activity, industrialization and urbanization. There has been significant reduction in areas under dense forest (9.49 km 2 ) and open scrub (10.83 km 2 ). The other notable changes have been observed in uncultivated land which reduced by 1.54 km 2 and waste land by 2.75 km 2 . On other hand, significant increase in area has been observed under plantation (5.08 km 2 ), cultivated land (6.25 km 2 ), mining area (2.16 km 2 ), overburden dumps (3.37 km 2 ) and settlement/built-up (5.22 km 2 ). Area under degraded forest has increased by 2.32 km 2 , industrial area by 0.18 km 2 and water body by 1.14 km 2 .