Understanding Land use land cover dynamics and its impact on Land surface temperature in Chilika Lake Watershed, India.

Abstract:

Analyzing changes in land use land cover (LULC) and exhibiting its potential impact on the regional climate is crucial for sustainable land use planning and ecosystem management. The goal of this study is to analyze the spatio-temporal variability of LULC in the Chilika Lake watershed for the period of 1988-2016. The observed dynamics are utilized to simulate LULC and land surface temperature (LST) for the year 2026. LULC maps are computed using support vector machine (SVM) technique on Landsat images of 1988, 1997, 2006 and 2016, with an overall accuracy of more than 92%. An integrated Cellular Automata and Markov chain (CA-Markov) model is utilized to predict the LULC distribution for the year 2026 which is subsequently used to compute LST for 2026. Results reveal a continuing increase in “Crop land”, “Emergent vegetation”, and “Built-up”, which expanded by 316.6 km² (7.8 fold), 68.08 km² (2.5 fold), and 31.2 km² (1.2 fold) over the period of 1988-2026. These changes reflect on the increased rate of sedimentation due to anthropogenic activities, which have resulted in the reduction of “Lake area” by 114 km² (13.28%) over the aforementioned period. The spatial analysis of LST for the year 2026 reveals a significant increase in most of the LULC classes. Consequently ~86% of the study area is predicted to have higher temperature compared to that of 2016. The average LST of Chilika Lake watershed is expected to rise by 2^°C during the period of 2016 – 2026. The detailed understanding of LULC variation and its consequences on LST presented here have major implications for the development and effective management of the ecosystem of Chilika Lake watershed.