Assessing land transformation and associated degradation of the Indian Ganga River Basin using forest cover land use mapping and residual trend analysis

作     者：Shafique MATIN Sujit GHOSH Mukunda D BEHERA 

作者机构：Centre for Oceans Rivers Atmosphere and Land Sciences Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur 

出 版 物：《Journal of Arid Land》 (干旱区科学(英文))

年 卷 期：2019年第11卷第1期

页      面：29-42页

核心收录：

学科分类：0709[理学-地质学] 07[理学] 08[工学] 09[农学] 0710[理学-生物学] 083002[工学-环境工程] 0830[工学-环境科学与工程（可授工学、理学、农学学位）] 0708[理学-地球物理学] 0815[工学-水利工程] 0705[理学-地理学] 0903[农学-农业资源与环境] 083306[工学-城乡规划管理] 0833[工学-城乡规划学] 0713[理学-生态学] 

主　　题：land degradation remote sensing NDVI GIMMS Ganga River Basin 

摘      要：The Indian Ganga River Basin（IGRB） has experienced continuous land transformation since the Indus Valley Civilisation shifted from the Indus basin to the Ganga basin. Particularly in the last few decades the land transformation has increased many-folds due to the changing climate and rapid increase in population. In this paper, we assessed land transformation and associated degradation in the IGRB based on the forest cover land use（FCLU） mapping and residual trend analysis（RTA）. The FCLU maps for 1975 and 2010 were generated using 216 Landsat satellite images and validated using 1509 ground points. We mapped 29 forest and 18 non-forest types and estimated a total loss of 5571 km2forest cover and expansion in settlement areas（5396 km2）. Other major changes mapped include a decrease in wetlands and water bodies, while an increase in agriculture and barren lands with an overall mapping accuracy of 85.3%（kappa, 0.82） and 88.43%（kappa, 0.84） for 1975 and 2010, respectively. We also performed the RTA analysis using GIMMS-NDVI3 g to identify areas of significant negative vegetative photosynthetic change as an indicator for land degradation. All the RTA models showed monotonic nature of the residual trends and resulted as moderately positive but highly significant（P0.001）. Land degradation in the form of barren land accompanied by a decline in vegetation quality and coverage was found prominent in the basin with a possibility of an accelerated rate of land degradation in future due to the rapid loss of permanent forest cover.