article · Sustainability
Human activity has driven substantial land use and land cover modifications across Pakistan's Southern Punjab province over a twenty-year period. Satellite observation using Landsat imagery at thirty-metre resolution and MODIS data at two hundred and fifty-metre resolution tracked environmental dynamics across four intervals between 2000 and 2021. By applying the iterative self-organising cluster technique, the analysis detected sharp reductions in vegetation alongside extensive urban and barren land growth. Between 2000 and 2021, forest coverage fell by 31.03 percent, diminishing total forest area to 4.36 percent of the region. Concurrently, settlements grew by 14.52 percent and barren land expanded by 12.87 percent. These shifts stem largely from commercial development and infrastructure expansion displacing natural vegetation. Continuous monitoring remains essential to assist regional authorities and policymakers in guiding future land management.
Rapid conversion of forests into urban settlements and barren terrain disrupts regional ecosystems and natural resources. Tracking these shifts using satellite data reveals the scale of environmental degradation caused by unmanaged commercial and infrastructural growth. Clear evidence on land cover dynamics provides public authorities and planners with the essential baseline data needed to design effective conservation policies and develop sustainable land management strategies.
The work offers an applied environmental monitoring methodology that urban planners, land management agencies, and policymakers can use to track land cover transitions and vegetation loss. Operating at an applied research stage, the approach relies on accessible satellite imagery and automated clustering requiring minimal intervention. While intended to support public policy and land planning frameworks rather than a commercial product, the methodology could inform commercial geographic information systems and spatial planning tools.
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Land use/land cover (LULC) changes are among the most significant human-caused global variations affecting the natural environment and ecosystems. Pakistan’s LULC patterns have undergone huge changes since the 1900s, with no clear mitigation plan. This paper aims to determine LULC and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) changes as well as their causes in Pakistan’s Southern Punjab province over four different periods (2000, 2007, 2014, and 2021). Landsat-based images of 30 m × 30 m spatial resolution were used to detect LULC changes, while NDVI dynamics were calculated using Modis Product MOD13Q1 (Tiles: h24 v5, h24 v6) at a resolution of 250 m. The iterative self-organizing (ISO) cluster method (object meta-clustering using the minimal distance center approach) was used to quantify the LULC changes in this research because of its straightforward approach that requires minimal human intervention. The accuracy assessment and the Kappa coefficient were calculated to assess the efficacy of results derived from LULC changes. Our findings revealed considerable changes in settlements, forests, and barren land in Southern Punjab. Compared to 2000, while forest cover had reduced by 31.03%, settlement had increased by 14.52% in 2021. Similarly, forest land had rapidly been converted into barren land. For example, barren land had increased by 12.87% in 2021 compared to 2000. The analysis showed that forests were reduced by 31.03%, while settlements and barren land increased by 14.52% and 12.87%, respectively, over the twenty year period in Southern Punjab. The forest area had decreased to 4.36% by 2021. It shows that 31.03% of forest land had been converted to urban land, barren ground, and farmland. Land that was formerly utilized for vegetation had been converted into urban land due to the expansion of infrastructure and the commercial sector in Southern Punjab. Consequently, proper monitoring of LULC changes is required. Furthermore, relevant agencies, governments, and policymakers must focus on land management development. Finally, the current study provides an overall scenario of how LULC trends are evolving over the study region, which aids in land use planning and management.
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DOI: 10.3390/su15043572
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