Land use change modelling using a Markov model and remote sensing

Land-use/land-cover (LU/LC) change is an important component of global environmental change. The need to understand LU/LC change is essential for regional development and land use management towards sustainable development. To understand LU/LC change, the different LU/LC categories and their spatial as well as temporal variability in Tiruchirappalli city has been studied over a period of eight years (1998–2006), using the analysis of Indian Remote Sensing Satellite (IRS) images. In this, an attempt was made to adopt Markov model for obtaining and understanding LU/LC dynamics. Model performance was evaluated between the empirical LU/LC map extracted from CARTOSAT-1 PAN image and the simulated LU/LC map obtained from the Markov model. The future landscape distribution in the year 2014 and 2022 was derived using a Markov model. This result shows that Markov model and geospatial technology together are able to effectively capture the spatio-temporal trend in the landscape pattern associated with urbanization in this region.