The present study examines the long-term effects of land use/land cover (LULC) changes in Rajasthan
state, India on land-atmosphere fluxes and, possibly in precipitation and aerosol loading. By comparing
the satellite observations from Landsat MSS (1972e73) and IRS-P6 AWiFS (2006e07) considerable LULC
changes are observed, an increase in crop-land and vegetated areas of w57% in the eastern and w68% in
the western Rajasthan. The increase in agriculture intensification from irrigation activities after the
construction of the Indira Gandhi canal (IGC) seems to affect the land-atmosphere fluxes, i.e. increase in
atmospheric humidity and latent heat and reduction in sensible heat. On the other hand, the multidecadal
variability (1951e2007) in annual rainfall amount and total number of rainy days reveals
significant year-to-year fluctuations, exhibiting a slight increasing trend over arid western Rajasthan.
However, the overall analysis shows that the variability in precipitation is much more influenced by the
general monsoonal circulation (i.e. meteorological dynamics and intensity of the monsoon) and partly
can be associated with local phenomena, such as LULC changes and modifications in land-atmosphere
fluxes. Similarly to precipitation, the long-term (1979e2008) aerosol index (AI) variations over the
region seem to be affected by atmospheric and meteorological dynamics and not by LULC changes.