The study prepares a landuse and landcover map of Devak catchment of Ujh river basin in Jammu for the years 1958, 1979, 1990 and 1998 using image processing and visual interpretation techniques. It involves analysis of IRS-1A L2B2 (FCC) data for the year 1990, IRS -1C LISS III (digital data) for the year 1998 and SoI topographic maps for the year 1958 and 1979.
Landuse and landcover exert considerable influence on the various hydrologic phenomenon such as interception, infiltration, evaporation and surface flows. Various aspects of hydrological problems like rainfall-runoff modeling, sedimentation studies, can be studied if information on landuse and landcover are available for a catchment.
In this analysis level I classification was adopted to categorise the various landuses like mixed forests (mainly pine), agriculture with sparse habitation, open scrub and scattered trees and water bodies. Results reveal a large change in the area of different landuse categories during the period 1958 to 1998.
The open scrub and scattered trees covering an area of about 46.17 % in 1958 reduced to 9.90 % in 1998 while the area under mixed forest increased from 36.68 % in 1958 to 65.84 % in 1998. The land under the category agriculture with sparse habitation also increased from 7.09 % in 1958 to 13.92 % in 1998. The main river drainage in the basin covers an area of about 10 % of the total catchment.
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