Summary In spite of contributing to social, economic and cultural well-being, wetlands in the Indian Himalayan Region have seen rapid degradation due to unplanned anthropogenic activities. We analysed spatiotemporal wetland dynamics in Srinagar (1991–2031) using remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems. The future land cover for 2031 was projected using an artificial neural network–multi-layer perceptron and cellular automata model. Change detection in the open water area of Dal Lake and its 2-km peri-lacustrine zone was conducted to identify land-cover transition patterns. Furthermore, wetland landscape pattern changes were quantified using landscape metrics to assess fragmentation and spatial configuration over time. The results reveal that, from 1991 to 2021, wetlands decreased from 16.12 to 7.2 km 2 , with the open surface water area of Dal Lake and its 2-km peri-lacustrine zone declining from 9.77 to 6.39 km 2 . The land cover projected for 2031 indicates that the total wetland area may decrease to 5.62 km 2 . Landscape metrics indicated increasing fragmentation and decreasing contiguity among wetland patches, as revealed by fluctuating shape complexity and aggregation, primarily due to conversions to agricultural land, fallow land and built-up areas.
Maurya et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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