Remote Sensing Letters

ISSN: 2150-704X (Print) 2150-7058 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/trsl20

Future land use land cover prediction with special

emphasis on urbanization and wetlands

Vicky Anand & Bakimchandra Oinam

To cite this article: Vicky Anand & Bakimchandra Oinam (2020) Future land use land cover
prediction with special emphasis on urbanization and wetlands, Remote Sensing Letters, 11:3,
225-234, DOI: 10.1080/2150704X.2019.1704304

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/2150704X.2019.1704304

Published online: 24 Dec 2019.

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REMOTE SENSING LETTERS
2020, VOL. 11, NO. 3, 225–234
https://doi.org/10.1080/2150704X.2019.1704304

Future land use land cover prediction with special emphasis

on urbanization and wetlands
Vicky Anand and Bakimchandra Oinam
Department of Civil Engineering, National Institute of Technology Manipur, Imphal, India

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Manipur River basin lies in the northeastern part of India in the Received 4 July 2019
lesser Himalayan ranges and it is under extreme pressure from Accepted 1 November 2019
natural and anthropogenic factors. This study aims to monitor
and predict the future land use land cover (LULC) for the region
using land change modeller (LCM) in TerrSet. Landsat satellite
images were used to produce LULC map for three different years
2007, 2014 and 2017. Based on these past LULC map, future LULC
map of the study area was developed using Markov Chain and
artificial neural network (ANN) analysis in LCM. ANN was trained
with the driver variable, namely, distance from roads, distance from
settlement, elevation and slope. Results indicate that there was an
increase in area under waterbodies, agriculture and built-up area by
15.93%, 2.42% and 11.58%, respectively, in 2017 with respect to
initial LULC condition in 2007. It can also be observed that there
was decrease of 6.08%, 28.65% and 0.55% in wetlands, herbaceous
wetlands and forest, respectively. Furthermore, similar trends were
observed in the predicted LULC map of 2030 with an increase of
16.4%, 3.06% and 20.99% in waterbodies, agriculture and built-up
area, and decrease of 6.48%, 41.56% and 1.4% in wetlands, herbac-
eous wetlands and forest. Based on the result of predicted LULC of
2030 which indicates drastic change in built-up area and herbac-
eous wetlands, there is a need for formulating proper urban plan-
ning and environmental preservation policies.

1. Introduction
One of the major natural resources of the country is land. Any town or city grows both
spatially and also by population with the time. Land use land cover (LULC) change from
one category to other or its modification has drastically altered a large section of surface
of Earth in order to fulfil the requirements of mankind (Foley et al. 2005; Vitousek et al.
1997). Changes in some of the important land type such as wetlands and forests are
becoming a global concern for many researchers (Scott and Metts 2012). One of the
important anthropogenic driving factors for the change in the environmental system on
both temporal and spatial scale is the change in land cover and land use. Such changes
include the severe environmental concerns which include ecological changes, climate
change, biodiversity losses and contamination of land, water and air (Singh et al. 2015).

CONTACT Vicky Anand vicky.einstein@gmail.com Department of Civil Engineering, National Institute of

Technology Manipur, Imphal, India
© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
226 V. ANAND AND B. OINAM

Mitigating and monitoring ill effects of LULC changes while sustaining the production of
vital resources have, therefore, become a major concern for policymakers and researchers
around the world.
Loktak catchment is one of the important sub-catchment of Manipur River basin.
Wetlands are ecosystems that connect land and water. The ways wetlands are linked to
climate change can be understood in two dimensions: firstly, the impact of climate
change on wetlands and secondly, the capacity wetlands have to influence climate
change (LDA, 2010). Impacts of change in LULC have led to changes in base flows, altered
hydrology, extended range and activity of some pests and disease vectors, increased
flooding, landslide and mudslide damage, increased soil erosion, decrease in recharge of
aquifers resulting from increased runoff and decreased water resources quality and
quantity in Loktak sub-basin (Ramsar, 2016). Based on the analysis of various issues
confronting Loktak Lake, the root cause problems can be traced to the loss of vegetation
cover in the catchment area. The degradation of the catchment area has led to the
problems of siltation, increased flow of nutrients, changes in hydrological regimes thereby
affecting the hydrological processes, inundation of low-lying agricultural area, displace-
ment of peoples from flooded lands, loss of diversity and decrease in thickness of
phumdis (herbaceous wetlands) in Keibul Lamjao National Park (KLNP) thereby threaten-
ing the survival of endangered animal species (LDA, 1999).
Remote sensing and geographical information system are recognized as powerful and
effective tools which have been widely used to detect LULC changes and future predic-
tion of LULC. Satellite remote sensing provides economical multi-temporal and multi-
spectral data and converts them into information necessary for inspecting and
understanding land use change patterns and land development processes. Prediction of
future LULC will help in proper urban planning and sustainable use of natural resources
(Omar et al. 2014). LULC change modelling is growing rapidly among the research and
scientific community. Modelling tools are Markov Chain, Cellular Automation (CA), etc.
(Islam and Md. 2011).
Markov Chain is one of the applications to analyse the LULC changes and predict the
future LULC of an area based on rates of the changes in the past. It is a probabilistic
approach of computing the probability of change in a piece of land from one class of LULC
to other. In order to predict future LULC of an area, the probabilities generated from
changes in the LULC in the past are applied (Aavikson 1995). The main objective of this
study is: (i) to analyse the spatio-temporal changes in LULC in the past decade from 2007
to 2017 and (ii) to predict future LULC for 2030 using Markov model in TerrSet geospatial
monitoring and modelling system.

2. Study area
Manipur River basin is located between 24° and 25°25ʹ North (latitude) and 93°36ʹ to 94°27ʹ
East (longitude) in the lesser Himalayan ranges in the northeastern part of India (Figure 1).
Major part of the area in this basin lies in the landlocked Manipur valley. Loktak Lake, an
important wetland in the state of Manipur, northeast India (LDA, 2003; Ramsar Bureau 2016),
also lies in the Manipur River basin. It covers an area of 287 km2. Imphal is the only
developed city located in the Manipur River basin.
 REMOTE SENSING LETTERS 227

Figure 1. Geographical location of Manipur River basin.

Major parts of the Manipur River basin comprise wetlands and forest cover. The
characteristic feature of Loktak Lake is the presence of floating islands covered with
vegetation, locally known as phumdis (WAPCOS, 1988). A contiguous 40-km2 area of
phumdis, KLNP, is the only floating wildlife sanctuary in the world (Trisal and Manihar
2004). This national park is the only natural home of the endemic and endangered species
of Manipur brow-antlered deer popularly known as Sangai (Dey 2002). Total catchment
area of the Manipur River basin is around 5063 km2.

3. Data acquisition and methodology

The present study involves preprocessing of Landsat satellite images and application of
Land Change Modeller (LCM). Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS C1 Level-1 and Landsat 5 TM C1 Level-1
images were downloaded from USGS Earth explorer website in order to perform LULC
classification for the years 2017, 2014 and 2007, respectively (Table 1). LULC image was
prepared by performing supervised classification using maximum likelihood algorithm in

Table 1. Details of satellite data.

Acquisition year Satellite/sensor Resolution (m)
2007 LANDSAT 5 TM C1 LEVEL 1 30
2014 LANDSAT 8 OLI/TIRS C1 LEVEL 1 30
2017 LANDSAT 8 OLI/TIRS C1 LEVEL 1 30
228 V. ANAND AND B. OINAM

Table 2. Descriptions of land use land cover classes.

LULC classes Definition/description
Built-up area Areas with human settlements/residential area (both urban and rural)
Forest Area stocked with trees capable of producing timber/wood products (both dense and open
forest)
Waterbodies Comprises lakes, streams, rivers, ponds, etc.
Wetlands Areas where water table is near/above the land surface for significant part of most years
(swampy land)
Agriculture Land used primarily for production of food and fibre
Herbaceous wetlands Heterogeneous mixture of vegetation, grasses and soil in floating condition (dominantly found
in Loktak Lake and KLNP)

Earth Resource Development Assessment System (ERDAS) Imagine 2015. LULC was clas-
sified in six different classes, namely, forest, wetlands, herbaceous wetlands, built-up area,
agriculture and waterbodies (Table 2). Accuracy assessment was performed on the
produced LULC map using ground control points. The produced LULC map was then
analysed and change detection was performed.
Based on the output of past LULC maps, future LULC of the area was predicted using
LCM of TerrSet 18.31. Markov Chain and artificial neural network (ANN) analysis
embedded in the LCM module were used to analyse LULC changes. Road network and
town plan map obtained from North Eastern Space Research Centre (NESAC) and
Department of Town Planning, respectively, was fed into LCM. ANN was trained with
the driving variables which include distance from road, distance from settlement, slopes
and elevation. Using obtained LULC maps for 2007 and 2014, LULC map of 2017 was
predicted using LCM. Predicted LULC map of 2017 was then compared to actual LULC
map of 2017 for the purpose of validation. After obtaining the good accuracy between
predicted and actual LULC of 2017, LULC maps of 2007 and 2017 were used to obtain the
projected LULC map of 2030 (Figure 2).

4. Cellular automation (CA)-Markov model

Markov in the land change module of TerrSet software mainly considers two techniques;
first is to assess the predicted LULC based on past LULC that has provided us to develop
transition probability matrix, i.e., the probability of conversion of one LULC class to

Figure 2. Methodology flowchart.

 REMOTE SENSING LETTERS 229

another. CA-Markov was used to predict the future LULC map for 2030 based on the LULC
maps of 2007 and 2017 (Mishra, Rai, and Mohan 2014; Eastman 2015). To apply this model
which is based on the number of random process T(s), FT is the function of random
process T, if Markov process for any time s1 < s2 < s3……< sn < sn+1; then, the random
process will satisfy Equation (1) (Subedi, Subedi, and Thapa 2013; Sang et al. 2011):
FT ðTðsnþ1 xnþ1 jTðsn Þ ¼ xn ; Tðsn1 Þ ¼ xn1 ; Tðs1 Þ ¼ FT ðTðsnþ1 Þx nþ1 ÞjTðsn Þ¼xn Þ; (1)
where sn represents present time, sn+1 represents any instant of time in future and s1, s2, …. .,
sn−1 represents various instants of time in the past. If Markov Chain is expressed as T[k] and
the states are (x1, x2, . . . .), then the probability of transition (Pu,v) from state u to state v at
a given instant is expressed in Equation (2):
Pu;v ðT½k þ 1 ¼ v jT½k ¼ uÞ: (2)

5. Results and discussion

LULC maps produced from satellite image for the years 2007, 2014 and 2017 are shown in
Figure 3. The overall accuracy of LULC maps developed for the years 2007, 2014 and 2017
were found to be 88%, 92% and 93%, respectively. Future projected LULC map for 2030
was developed using LCM from the past LULC map is represented in Figure 3. LULC for the
different time period was analysed and change detection was performed. Percentage
change in different LULC classes over a different time period is tabulated.
It can be observed that there was an increase of 7.55%, 2.3% and 10.69% in waterbodies,
agriculture and built-up area, whereas there was decrease in the wetlands, herbaceous wet-
lands and forest by 5.99%, 22.54% and 0.46%, respectively, between the years 2007 and 2014
(Table 3). A similar trend can be observed between the years 2014 and 2017 where there was
increase of 9.07%, 0.12% and 0.99% in waterbodies, agriculture and built-up area, whereas
there was decrease of 0.08%, 4.98%, 0.09% in wetlands, herbaceous wetlands and forest cover,
respectively (Table 4). In both the time period, it can be observed that the area under water-
bodies, herbaceous wetlands and built-up area changed at a rapid rate as compared to the
other LULC categories. In 2014, area under water increased by 7.55% due to the removal of
phumdis (floating herbaceous wetlands) from the central zone of the Loktak Lake in order to
retain the open water and increase aquaculture by the government, whereas in 2017, area
under water increased by 9.07% due to the construction of Maphou dam on Thoubal River in
the eastern side of the catchment area. Based on changes in the LULC of 2007 and 2014, LULC
for 2017 was predicted and was validated with the actual LULC of 2017. The results of
coefficient of determination (R2) value calculated between the predicted and actual LULC
map in 2017 showed high performance of the model in predicting the future LULC change
with R2 value of 0.86. Based on the change in LULC of 2007 and 2017, future LULC map of 2030
was predicted. As it can be observed that the change in area under built-up is predicted to get
increased by 20.99% in 2030 as compared to 2007 whereas in case of area under herbaceous
wetlands is predicted to get decreased by 41.56% in 2030 as compared to 2007.
By analysing the change in built-up area between 2007 and 2017, there was an increase
of 11.58% (Table 5). This increase in the area under built-up was mainly concentrated in
the area around Imphal city as it is the only developed city in the basin with a population
of more than 5 lakhs. This intensification is mainly because of perceived available business
230 V. ANAND AND B. OINAM

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

Figure 3. LULC maps of (a) 2007, (b) 2014 and (c) 2017. (d) Projected future LULC map of 2030.

opportunities. Most of the new built-up area are residential colonies, commercial build-
ings and educational buildings. Following the same trend of increase in built-up area in
the past, it is most likely to increase by 20.99% in 2030 (Table 6). The projected urban
sprawl around the fringes of Imphal is shown in Figure 4.
 REMOTE SENSING LETTERS 231

Table 3. LULC change assessment between the years 2007 and 2014.
LULC classes Area in 2007 (km2) Area in 2014 (km2) Change in area (km2) Change (%)
Waterbodies 78.98 85.43 6.45 7.55
Agriculture 1521.78 1557.68 35.9 2.3
Wetlands 158.01 149.08 −8.93 −5.99
Herbaceous wetlands 264.64 215.96 −48.68 −22.54
Built-up area 235.25 263.42 28.17 10.69
Forest 2804.49 2791.58 −12.91 −0.46
Total 5063.15 5063.15

Table 4. LULC change assessment between the years 2014 and 2017.
LULC classes Area in 2014 (km2) Area in 2017 (km2) Change in area (km2) Change (%)
Waterbodies 85.43 93.95 8.52 9.07
Agriculture 1557.68 1559.52 1.84 0.12
Wetlands 149.08 148.96 −0.12 −0.08
Herbaceous wetlands 215.96 205.71 −10.25 −4.98
Built-up area 263.42 266.07 2.65 0.99
Forest 2791.58 2788.94 −2.64 −0.09
Total 5063.15 5063.15

Table 5. LULC change assessment between the years 2007 and 2017.
LULC classes Area in 2007 (km2) Area in 2017 (km2) Change in area (km2) Change (%)
Waterbodies 78.98 93.95 14.97 15.93
Agriculture 1521.78 1559.52 37.74 2.42
Wetlands 158.01 148.96 −9.05 −6.08
Herbaceous wetlands 264.64 205.71 −58.93 −28.65
Built-up area 235.25 266.07 30.82 11.58
Forest 2804.49 2788.94 −15.55 −0.55
Total 5063.15 5063.15

Table 6. LULC change assessment between the years 2007 and 2030.
LULC classes Area in 2007 (km2) Area in 2030 (km2) Change in area (km2) Change (%)
Waterbodies 78.98 94.47 15.49 16.4
Agriculture 1521.78 1569.79 48.01 3.06
Wetlands 158.01 148.39 −9.62 −6.48
Herbaceous wetlands 264.64 186.94 −77.7 −41.56
Built-up area 235.25 297.76 62.51 20.99
Forest 2804.49 2765.8 −38.69 −1.4
Total 5063.15 5063.15

Decrease in herbaceous wetland by 28.65% in 2017 is mainly concentrated in the area

surrounding the Loktak Lake. Decrease in the herbaceous wetlands area is mainly because
of the removal of phumdis (floating herbaceous wetlands) from the central zone and
conversion of Phumdis to Athaphums (long circular strip of phumdis artificially created for
the purpose of fishing) (LDA, 2006). This spatial change in the herbaceous wetlands is
a serious concern for KLNP, the only floating national park in the world, as it is made of
floating herbaceous wetlands called Phumdis. In the past decade, spatial change in the
herbaceous wetlands has bought significant change in the ecology and in the habitat of
various animal species in the KLNP. There is a scope of separate study to be done with the
higher-resolution data in order to understand the relationship between spatial changes in
the herbaceous wetlands and the change in the habitat of various animal species in KLNP.
With the high-resolution data, second level of land use of classification can be done in
232 V. ANAND AND B. OINAM

(a) (b)

(c)
Figure 4. (a) Projected urban sprawl around Imphal, (b) projected spatial change in wetlands near
Loktak and (c) projected spatial change in herbaceous wetland in Keibul Lamjao National Park.

order to analyse the change in thick and thin phumdis. Change in land use is a major
concern for sustainable management and restoration of Loktak Lake. Change in land use
badly affects the fragile ecosystem. Projected spatial change in herbaceous wetlands
around Loktak Lake and KLNP is shown in Figure 4. Overall statistics of change in LULC
for different years are represented in Figure 5.
Increase in human population in the basin (Manipur Population Census 2011) has put
severe pressure on the natural resources of the lake for sustainability and livelihood of the
peoples staying. Removal of phumdis (herbaceous wetlands) for the purpose of fisheries is
a major concern for environmentalist as it homes endangered Rucervus eldii eldii and several
other animal species. Shrinkage in the area under forest cover is one of the reasons behind the
significant change in the climatic conditions in the basin in the past decade. Due to climate
change and continuous soil erosion, the productivity of the land is getting degraded at an
 REMOTE SENSING LETTERS 233

Figure 5. Area under different LULC categories for different years.

alarming rate (LDA and WISA (Loktak Development Authority and Wetlands International
South Asia) 2003). Conversion of area under forest cover to jhum (shifting cultivation) is one of
the important factors of land degradation especially in the northern sides and south-eastern
of the basin. Transformation of other LULC classes to the built-up area provides an indication
about increase in impervious surface within the basin that may lead to many hydrological
problems, i.e., increase in surface runoff and decline in groundwater recharge.

6. Conclusion
The rapid increase in urbanization without proper planning and encroachment of forest
and wetlands possesses a serious threat to the environmental system. Proper environ-
ment preservation policies and land use planning are required to minimize the negative
impacts due to these changes. The models like LCM can be used to predict the future
changes, to model growth scenarios and to answer ‘what-if’ like questions. Predicting the
future LULC enables us to build proper policies for the protection and preservation of the
environment and sustainable use of the resources. This study also shows that the valuable
spatial information can be obtained from remote sensing data which can be used for
formulating proper planning and sustainable development.

Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the valuable databases from United States Geological Survey
(USGS), North East Space Application Centre (NESAC), Department of Town Planning (Manipur State
Government) and Forest Department (Manipur State Government).

Conflicts of interest
Authors have declared that no conflict of interest exists.

Funding
This study was supported by GATE scholarship by Ministry of Human Resource Development,
Government of India and National Institute of Technology Manipur – Recipient: Vicky Anand and
Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) – Recipient: Bakimchandra Oinam [YSS/2014/
000917].
234 V. ANAND AND B. OINAM

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