Monitoring the Impact of Built-up Area Expansion on Agricultural Land of District Sargodha, Pakistan

Abstract

This research is designed to detect changes in agricultural land because of growth and expansion in built up area within district Sargodha, Pakistan. The study period for the current study have temporal gap of 10 years, from 1993 to 2023 making 30 years overall. The four years; 1993, 2003, 2013 and 2023 are specified as study years where the actual change in land categorization is identified. To detect the specified classes which are built-up area expansion and agricultural land in the study area, supervised classification technique is basically used through Remote Sensing and GIS based techniques. Landsat 5 is used for the year 1993, Landsat 7 for 2003, Landsat 8 is accessed for the study period of 2013 and Landsat 9 is selected for the satellite based image of 2023. Temporal changes in agricultural land in the study area are rapid and the expansion of built up areas is un- controlled. Despite having fertile land for agriculture especially for citrus fruits, the land is decreasing due to shifting of such land to urban infrastructure. The analysis of the results using Remote sensing techniques reveals that the built up area expanded from 5% in 1993 to 13% in 2023 while agricultural land decreased from 83% in 1993 to 70% in 2023. The accuracy assessments for the study periods show acceptable and significant figures.