Land Use / Land Cover Change Monitoring in Part of Jaintia Hills, Meghalaya Using Remote Sensing Technique

This paper deals with the land use land cover change monitoring over the years of 17 duration between 1983 to 2000 using coincidence matrix between the classified details of Landsat MSS and IRS-IC LISS III data of respective years. Maximum Likelihood classification and post classification comparison techniques were performed for evolving coincidence matrix. The ground observations and the empirical evidences quantified under the study reflected that the ischolar_main cause of changes among land use land cover types had been centered on coal mining activities. The overall rate of change was found as 2.16% per year. This includes 0.1% per year change due to coal mines. The agricultural land was reduced by 26.40km² or 22.35% out of its total area and the land was transformed into coal maines, habitation related to coal mines and the abandoned agricultural land classified as grassland! scrub. Coal mining activities have also caused the loss of tree and bamboo vegetation cover by 54.79 km² or 7.27% out of the total area indicating the rate of loss as 0.6% per year.