Land use land cover changes on Asia’s largest freshwater lake and their impact on society and environment

The present study focuses on examining the changes in land use land cover and their impact on socio-environmental parameters using multitemporal satellite and observatory data. The Wular Lake, which is one of the largest freshwater lakes in Asia, has experienced drastic changes. To explore the changes in land use land cover from 1979 to 2018 over lake catchment, Landsat Multi-Spectral Scanner (MSS) for the year 1979, Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM) plus for the year 2001 and Landsat 8 OLI (Operational Land Imager) for the year 2018 were used for generating different land use land cover classes over lake catchment using visual interpretation in the GIS environment. For the same period, the changes in land use land cover were linked with the decadal changes in precipitation, temperature and black carbon. Significant reductions in the water area and agriculture area have been reported over the lake and its catchment. We report an increase in built-up, aquatic vegetation, horticulture, marshy land, plantation and river area over the catchment. The water area of Wular Lake has been decreased by 74.99%. A decadal decrease of about 1.22% in river discharge over the Jhelum River has been reported. Precipitation over the catchment shows a decadal decrease of about 0.54%. A decrease of about 23.62% in agriculture has been reported over the lake catchment. Built-up area, aquatic vegetation, horticulture, river area and marshy land show increases of about 223.73%, 17.57%, 45.68%, 15.88% and 2384.1%, respectively from 1979 to 2018. Black carbon concentration shows a decadal increase of about 2.214% over the region from 1980 to 2018. The research reports the changes in land use and land cover over the region and explores the impact of these changes over the study area. Results reported in this study highlight the importance of implementation of strict policies for the conservation of the Wular Lake and highlight the importance of carefully monitoring of discharge of river Jhelum.