An Analysis of Land Use and Land Cover Change Detection Using Geospatial Technology-A Case Study of Phalsoond Tehsil in Jaisalmer District, Rajasthan, India

Abstract

Analysis of Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) change is significant indicators of environmental changes, resource utilization and sustainable development, especially in arid regions where land and water resources are very fragile. The present study has investigated the spatio-temporal analysis of LULC changes in Phascoond Tehsil of Jaisalmer District of Rajasthan, India from the year 2017 to 2024 using Remote sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques. To classify the study area, multi-temporal Sentinel-2 data with 10 m spatial resolution were provided by the Esri Sentinel-2 Land Cover Explorer, which was used to separate the area into five categories i.e. water bodies, agriculture land, built-up areas, bare ground and wasteland. LULC changes were quantified in terms of magnitude and direction using post-classification comparison and GIS-based change detection techniques. The findings show significant change in landscape over the year 2017 to 2024. Wasteland remained the dominant land-cover category but declined from 779.07 km² (78.28%) in 2017 to 726.86 km² (71.41%) in 2024. Agricultural area grew by 86.62 km² (+19.48% to 280.52 km²), adding 94.76 km² of wasteland. Gradual settlement and infrastructure development also resulted in an increase in built-up area from 3.89 km2 to 7.73 km2 . The water bodies were small in spatial extent and slight shifts happened between bare ground and other land-cover classes. The results clearly show that the Sentinel-2 data and GIS-based analysis is useful in monitoring LULC dynamics in data-sparse arid regions. The present extent of agriculture and development has occurred at a time when there is a need to manage the land and groundwater resources sustainably, monitor environment, and plan land use with climate change in Phalsoond tehsil of Jaisalmer District in western Rajasthan.