Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Land Cover/Land Use Changes Using Geoinformatics (A Case Study of Margallah Hills National Park)

In order to make any strategy for management of National Park, it is necessary to understand the dynamics of land use/ land cover changes .Remote Sensing and GIS have significant magnitude for analysis of spatial extent and temporal changes of land cover/land use in urban and regional planning studies. The objective of the present research is to identify the nature, extent and spatial pattern of land cover changes during 1997-2008 in MHNP Islamabad through high resolution satellite imagery .The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Maximum Likelihood Classification (MLC) algorithms are used to determine the vegetation cover and spatial extent of different land use/ land cover classes of the study area respectively. The second objective of this research is to find the spatial distribution of exotic species based on different environmental factors through decision tree classification method. Results show that vegetation cover declines during 1997-2008 and vegetation health is affected by the presence of these exotic species, because these species are not suitable to local ecosystem. About 2.5% area of the NP is occupied by Paper Mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera) and 9.4% by Punch Phali (Lantana camara).The results provides the effective analysis of land cover of National park which might be helpful in efforts towards the conservation of this ecological heritage site.