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Two-decade Spatio-temporal Land Use and Cover Changes in District Shangla of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Two-decade Spatio-temporal Land Use and Cover Changes in District Shangla of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Shakeel Ahmad1, Muhammad Israr2*, Muhammad Amin3, Muhammad Sadiq Hashmi4, Nafees Ahmad5 and Rasheed Ahmad6

1School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China; 2Department of Rural Development, Faculty of Rural Social Sciences AMKC, Mardan, The University of Agriculture, Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan; 3Department of Environmental Sciences, COMSATS University Islamabad, Abbottabad Campus, Abbottabad, 22060, Pakistan; 4Department of Economics, University of Malakand, Pakistan; 5Department of Soil and Climate Sciences, The University of Haripur, Pakistan.

 
*Correspondence | Muhammad Israr, Department of Rural Development, Faculty of Rural Social Sciences AMKC, Mardan, The University of Agriculture Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan; Email: [email protected] 

ABSTRACT

Changes in land use land cover (LULC) play a vital role in developing and sustainable management of natural resources. The northern mountains of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa-Pakistan are rich in biodiversity and provide fragmented and fragile ecosystem services while vulnerability to the rapid changes in LULC with irreversible impacts on ecosystems, especially in district Shangla. Real-time monitoring and assessment are essential to understand such changes in LULC. In the current study, spatio-temporal changes of LULC were obtained from MODIS (MCD12Q1) product from 2001–2018 to examine LULC in the district Shangla of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa-Pakistan. LULC types were classified into seven major classes: evergreen forest, savannas, grasslands, permanent wetlands, croplands, natural vegetation, and barren land. The result indicated that grasslands (17.04–12.84%) and cropland (34.73–18.12%) decreased significantly due to over population pressure coupled by natural hazards, while savannas (40.63–49.25%), permanent wetlands (0.03–0.07%), and natural vegetation (3.13–14.96%), were increased significantly as a result of the different internations for the conservations in the area. As a result, the development of LULC maps will play a vital role in sustainable management of LULC in northern Pakistan due to the lack of ground and reliable data towards the targets of sustainable development goals in the area.

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Sarhad Journal of Agriculture

September

Vol.40, Iss. 3, Pages 680-1101

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