Mapping and monitoring of land use/land cover changes in Neil Island (South Andaman) using geospatial approaches

Abstract

Present study examines the dynamics of land use/ land cover changes to Neil Island, South Andaman using Remote Sensing and GIS for a period of 13 years. Geocoded satellite imageries of Landsat TM (2000) and Landsat ETM 8 (2013) were used to identify the changes between 2000 and 2013. Visual interpretation technique was carried out to identify the features from the satellite imagery along with ground truth verifications. Land use categories such as forest area, mangroves, coral reefs, sandy beach, water body and built-up land have been identified and mapped. The present status (2013) of these resources is as follows: forest area 735.17 ha (40.17%), built-up land covers 601.15 ha (32.85%), coral reef covers an area of 441.00 ha (24.10%), mangroves covers 34.03 ha (1.86%) and sandy beach covers 16.15 ha (0.88%). Forest area was the largest component of land use feature which shows a significant change from 2000 to 2013. Aerial extent of coral reef and mangroves was decreased to 9.21 ha and 2.32 ha respectively.