ANALYSIS OF LAND USE/LAND COVER CHANGES IN HAMBANTOTA DIVISIONAL SECRETARIAT DIVISION FROM 2008 TO 2019 USING REMOTE SENSING AND GIS TECHNIQUES

Abstract

The classification of land use / land cover (LU/LC) for certain area plays a major role in planning, management, and monitoring programs as well as it helps to study the changes which are happening in the environment and ecosystem. This study aims to evaluate LU/LC changes in Hambantota Divisional Secretariat Division from 2008 to 2019. Hence LU/LC cover changes spatially with time; this study is conducted by using supervised classification, particularly maximum likelihood classification and accuracy assessment using Remote Sensing and GIS techniques. The results revealed that the increment of water bodies (2.39%), agriculture (0.44%) and built-up areas (27.66%), and decrement of barren lands (11.61%) and forest cover (18.88%) with the time due to the vast development over the years. The overall accuracy for both 2008 and 2019 ranged from 86.7 percent to 83.3 percent and the Kappa coefficient ranged from 0.888 to 0.912.