IMPACT OF FLOODING ON LAND USE/ LAND COVER TRANSFORMATION IN WULAR LAKE AND ITS ENVIRONS, KASHMIR VALLEY, INDIA USING GEOINFORMATICS

Abstract. Wular lake, located at an elevation of 1520 m above sea level in Kashmir valley, India. In the present study, the immediate and long term impact of flood (2014) over the Wular lake environs was analyzed by using satellite images and employing supervised classification technique in GIS environment. The LULC classification was performed on the images of 25th August 2014 (pre flood) and 13th September 2015 (post flood) and was compared, which indicated marked decrease in terrestrial vegetation (23.7 %), agriculture (43.7 %) and water bodies (39.9 %). Overlaying analysis was performed with pre and post flood classified images with reference to the satellite image of 10th September 2014(during flood) which indicated total area inundated during flood was 88.77 km². With the pre-flood situation, the aquatic vegetation of 34.06 km², 13.89 km² of agriculture land and terrestrial vegetation of 3.13 km² was inundated. In the post flood situation, it was also came into focus that more than the half of the area under water bodies was converted into sand deposits (22.76 km²) due to anomalous increase in siltation. The overlay analysis on post flood classified image indicated that aquatic vegetation followed by agriculture and sand deposits lie within the flood inundated area. Further spatial analysis was performed within the flood inundated area (88.77 km²) with pre and post classified image to understand the situation before and after the flood and to calculate the changes. These land use-land cover transformations signifies the ill effect of flooding on the biodiversity of Wular Lake.