Land use/ land cover changes in Mandaitivu a study based on remote sensing technology.

Abstract

Land use Information is the fundamental to manipulate effectively the valuable and important Land resources in a country. Land use information is measured by Land use surveys. Land use refers to the human activities in join to a particular land while Land cover refers to natural and artificial scenarios which cover the land. This land use and land cover causes into changes due to the influence of human, physical factors and creates positive and negative effects. Rapid changes are being occurred in land use by the development activities conducted in the Jaffna Peninsula during the post war period. Researches about Land use and its changes and attempts to map them have been carried out for several decades. Remote sensing technology is a developed technology and widely used to map the land use pattern and to detect the changes of land use. In this study, land use/land cover mapping and change detection was carried out using pre and post image classification methods in Mandaitivu Island of the Jaffna Peninsula. Primary data were collected from the field for the image classification and accuracy testing. As a result of the study, it was observed that paddy land has been reducing significantly and on the other hand, home garden has been increasing since 1999. In addition to this land fragmentation and loss of land productivity were reported. This study will be useful to minimize in-concurrent land use changes and to carry out the land use survey using appropriate methods.