Land-use mapping and change detection in a coal mining area - a case study in the Jharia coalfield, India

In an area like the Jharia coalfield (JCF), where extensive and rapid underground and opencast mining is going on continuously, land-use studies are of paramount importance. This paper discusses the remote sensing-GIS techniques used for identification of various land-use classes on satellite imagery and enhanced products and identification of time-sequential changes in land-use patterns. The various land-use classes, recognised from satellite image data and held surveys, are dense vegetation, sparse vegetation, fire, opencast mining (coal), overburden dump, subsidence and barren wasteland, settlement, transport network, river and water pond. A number of image processing operations have been carried out on remote sensing data for enhancing land-use patterns. It has been found that Landsat TM false colour composites (FCC) of bands 4, 3 and 2; FCC of bands 7, 5 and 3; FCC of bands 5, 4 and 2 and ratio images provide very useful information for land-use mapping. The normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) images have been used for vegetation studies. Image characters of various land-use classes on black-and-white and enhanced colour products have been tabulated. Land-use maps of selected windows have been prepared and examples given. Time-sequential surface changes that have occurred in the JCF since 1975 and particularly between November 1990 to November 1994 have been investigated. For change detection analysis, data manipulation in several steps involving preprocessing, processing and colour display have been carried out. Land-use changes have been detected by (a) image differencing, (b) image ratioing, and (c) differencing of NDVI images. It is inferred from the remote sensing images that extensive mining, establishment of communication networks, expansion of settlements, decrease in the vegetation cover etc., have remodelled the face of the JCF.