EVALUATION OF LAND USE LAND COVER (LULC) CHANGES IN THE DIU ISLAND OF THE SAURASHTRA REGION FOR SUSTAINABLE RESTORATION OF HISTORIC LANDMARKS

Abstract

Diu city of Gujarat, India is well known city for it traditional heritage sites of Portuguese
and Indian culture. It has various natural and man-made heritage sites such as beaches,
coastal flora, fauna, rocky creeks, stone quarries, Fort, churches, museum, temples,
mosques, markets squares, traditional houses, cross, pillars, and statues which attracts
tourists from different places of the world. In order to know the changes in land use and
land cover in this city due to urbanization and its impact on maintenance of heritage sites
during the past 30 years present studies were carried out. The study primarily focused on
the land use and land cover deviations using Maximum Likelihood (MXL) Classification
algorithm to classify the Landsat 5 and 8 imageries of the year 1991, 2001, 2011 and
2021 in QGIS software. The changes in various parameters like residential and
commercial constructions, wild and anthropogenic vegetation cover, water bodies and
open land area in Diu city were observed in LULC maps. Overall accuracy of the data
was determined with the help of ESRI ArcGIS ® through Kappa statistics. The
post–classification comparison method helped in identification of changes occurred in the
Diu city during last 30 years due to urbanization. From present studies it was observed
that there was gradual decrease in open land in the city from year 1991 to 2021 which is
utilized either for built up of hotels/resorts, tourism sites, commercial complexes,
development of anthropogenic vegetation, or lakes in the city for socioeconomic
development and urbanization.