Evaluation of Land Use/Land Cover Change in Mula-Mutha Watershed, Pune Urban Agglomeration, Maharashtra, India, Based on Remote Sensing Data

Mula-Mutha basin is one of the rapidly urbanizing watersheds, wherein two major urban centers – Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad have developed at an alarming rate in the last two decades or so. In order to bring out the changes in land use/land cover within this watershed, two images spanning over 19 years were analyzed. This data were supplemented by the field observations and other ancillary data layers which served as the basic sources of data for land cover change detection maps. It was observed that there was a net increase of around 5.33% in the built up area. However this increase is with respect to the entire basin and the actual sprawl is observed near the main urban cores. Most of the development in terms of built up is observed all along the fringe areas of the major settlements and major highways crawling out of the city in all the directions. A significant decrease of 12% was noticed in barren land which is the result of the ever growing city limits and thus the built up areas. Lower values of NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) for the city parts were noticed, which are suggestive of absence of vegetation. However, vegetation cover has increased in the upper and lower reaches of the basin which is attributed to the various watershed management schemes like afforestation, gully bunds, KT weirs, etc. by the local governmental and/or non-governmental organizations especially in the rural areas. It can be concluded that though the level of development has gone up in terms of increasing built up areas it has resulted in the decrease of barren land and the vegetation cover in the watershed.