Assessment of spatio-temporal dynamics of land degradation and desertification in Pakistan and its impact on agriculture productivity

Abstract

Various natural and anthropogenic activities such as climate change, urbanization and industrialization play a vital role in changing the land characteristics. These changes does not only affect the human lives and activities, but also results in tremendous decrease in agricultural productivity and arable land. Thus, the purpose of this study is to analyze the land degradation and desertification in Pakistan using satellite imageries data acquired from the Landsat 8 and 9. For the empirical analysis, various indices such as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, Normalized Difference Bare Soil Index, Supervised classification and Land Surface Temperature are examined using Google earth engine cloud computing platform. The results showed that desertified and built-up-land are increasing, while degraded land, arable land, and vegetative land are decreasing in the study area. Also, results of land surface temperature analysis showed a rise in the temperature up to 3.060C as compared to previous two years. Moreover, estimated findings from regression analysis showed that Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, and Normalized Difference Bare Soil Index positively affects the Land Surface Temperature. The findings of study are important for government and concern stakeholders to take necessary measures to stop the conversion of productive green land into unproductive degraded and desertified land.