REMOTE SENSING AND GIS FOR LAND COVER CLASSIFICATION AND CHANGE DETECTION IN GAZIPUR SADAR, BANGLADESH DURING 1973-2017

Abstract

This paper has been developed to capture the land coverage change in Gazipur Sadar Upazila with the help of remote sensing data of 44 years from 1973 to 2017. After acquiring the study area image of 1973, 1991, 2006 and 2017 supervised classification method has been used to get the accurate information from the satellite image and the whole outcome has been transformed into measurable unit (sq km) and graphs. The accuracy of land coverage was ranged from 85% to 89%. The outcome says that the acceleration of economic growth and pressure of huge population took a heavy toll on the vegetation coverage which decreased -199.7%. People are destroying vegetation coverage for building up settlements and infrastructure. In the year 2017, the map shows that the built-up area increased 312.9% for industry, settlement and agricultural purpose. Moreover agricultural land also drops down from 42% to 32%.  The rapid rate of decreasing vegetation coverage and small amount of existing vegetation coverage only 57 sq km (in 2017) is a red alert for the region. The Sal forest and other special flora species of that region is valuable resource for environment. This paper shed light on the fact that it is urgent to protect vegetation coverage so it will help the authority to make good policies and use other techniques to save vegetation coverage.