A GIS Based Study of Land Use/Land Cover and Physiography of Siwani Area, Bhiwani

The demand for land for the needs of growing population is greater than actual land resources available. The basic needs of the increasing population can be met through proper planning. This can only be met through bringing more area under use. For the purpose regular monitoring is essential for scientific management, to increase the area and regular monitoring of an area is easily solved by Remote Sensing and GIS tool. Remote Sensing and GIS becomes a powerful tool with following advantages for survey, mapping and regular monitoring of land use/ land cover of an area. The present study shows the simple example of this technique to prepare the base map, land use/land covers map and physiography of Siwani area, Bhiwani. In the present study digital image processing and visual interpretation techniques were employed to carry out Land use/Land cover classification using digital data and standard False Colour Composite (FCC) paper print of Indian Remote Sensing satellite. After this, field survey is also done, to get a general idea of the features environment and accessibility and make the ground truth verification with our pre field data. Finalization of land use map is done after incorporating necessary corrections and modifications after field check. The land use/land cover map is classified in various classes like as built-up area, agricultural area, waste land, water bodies and grassland. The results show that out of total area (603.45 sq. km), maximum area is come under the category of agricultural area (587.43 sq. km). Out of total agricultural area fallow land is spread over a large part of the study area i.e., cover 71 per cent of the total area. As per Physiography classification results, nearly 50 per cent area is covered by sand dunes complexes, which is the major cause of fallow land.