Expansion of human settlement and accompanying
activities, especially the rapid urbanisation occurring in the
developing countries, play an important role in global land use
land cover change. The changes in land use associated with
urban development affect the hydrological regime in many ways
such as change in total runoff, flooding in low lying areas etc.
Preparation of Land use map from toposheets and satellite
imageries and their analysis by ArcGIS is an efficient method for
assessing the landuse landcover change. Landuse landcover
information have become important for landuse planning and
resource management.
In this study,Kazhakuttam block of Trivandrum
district is taken as the study area.Here a study is conducted to
assess the landuse landcover changes of Kazhakuttam block from
1967 to 2005 using GIS and ERDAS imagine softwares.The
landuse map of 1967 is prepared from toposheets and landuse
maps of 1999and 2005 were made from satellite images .These
maps are analysed to identify the land use changes of the study
area .