Effect of canal on land use/land cover using remote sensing and GIS

The monitoring of land use/land covers (LULCs) is an indispensable exercise for all those involved in executing policies to optimize the use of natural resources and minimize the ill impacts on the environment. The study here aims at analyzing the changes that occurred in LULC over a time span from 1990 to 2005 using multi date data of a part of Punjab. The digital data consisted of two sets of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data and one set of IRS-1C data. Utilizing hybrid classification technique for interpretation and on field validation, it has been found that canal irrigation leads to changes in LULC as there is a change in cropping pattern as well as increase in water logged area.