ASSESSMENT OF LAND USE/LAND COVER CHANGES FROM 2001 TO 2021 USING GOOGLE EARTH ENGINE IN RAMAGUNDAM MINING AREA, PRANHITA-GODAVARI VALLEY, SOUTHERN INDIA

Abstract

Coal is one of the important primary sources of energy in India, which are generally extracted through open cast mining. However, coal mining activities, particularly open cast mining method are known to result in adverse environmental impacts such as vegetation loss, air pollution, ground water contamination along with changes in land use land cover (LULC) features. Hence, reliable temporal data on the impact of mining activities are required to aid in mine reclamation and management efforts. Assessment of LULC changes over the last two decades was carried out in this study in Ramagundam coal field, a part of the Pranhita-Godavari valley using Google Earth Engine (GEE) integrated with Geographical Information System (GIS). Landsat 5 and Landsat 8 multispectral satellite data of 2001 and 2021 with <5% cloud cover were used to classify LULC classes. The different land use classes mainly water body, vegetation, builtup and mining area in Ramagundam coal field are classified in GEE through supervised classification using Classification And Regression Tree (CART) classifier. The study reveals that the mining operations increased dramatically between 2001 and 2021. On the other hand, agriculture land has also risen as barren land has been turned to productive land as a result of some effective environmental policies. This study will aid policy makers and environmentalists in understanding nature of change in LULC features in the area so as to plan accordingly. ASSESSMENT OF LAND USE/LAND COVER CHANGES FROM 2001 TO 2021 USING GOOGLE EARTH ENGINE IN RAMAGUNDAM MINING AREA, PRANHITA-GODAVARI VALLEY, SOUTHERN INDIA Received on: 19.09.2021 Revised on: 30.09.2021 Accepted on: 15.10.2021