Geospatial Analysis of Reversal of Desertification in Bahawalpur city of Cholistan desert

Abstract

The expeditious increase in urbanization leaves a salient outcome on changing land use land cover (LULC) by replacing the areas of desert and water with architecture, vegetation, thereby changing the ecosystem. The objective of this study is to calculate and analyze geospatial changes caused by land use land cover classes over a time span of 20 years from 2000 to 2020 in Cholistan desert of Bahawalpur city in the context of population livestock and on the basis of data, to predict the land use land cover changes. To compute these land use land cover changes during the time span of 20 years from 2000 to 2020, the supervised maximum likelihood method, to classify the satellite imagery from the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) and Land operational imager (OLI) is used. Supervised change detection is performed to get the numerical number of changes in land use land cover classes to detect the interconversion of classes. Moreover, for a better understanding of geospatial changes with livestock and population, various indices are derived from Landsat imagery. These indices are the Normalized vegetative index and the Normalized built-up index (NDVI and NDBI). The findings show that there has been an 18% rise in the built-up area, ≈ 100% decrease in the desert, a 15% drop in water bodies, 35% increase in population, 12.7% decrease in livestock, and a 6% increase in vegetation, with variable patterns of agriculture in these classes. This research finding will assist the policymakers for the sustainable development and to conserve the natural resources of the study area.