Mapping and Monitoring of Wetland Ecosystems: A Case Study on Harike and Keshopur Wetland Over Punjab Region, India

Abstract

Wetland plays a vital role in sustainable ecological development. They hold balanced environment conditions and filter the surface and sub-surface water and moderate the local weather condition. But now-a-days wetlands are shrinking quickly all over world due to climate change & anthropogenic activities and extinction of wetlands agitates the local environmental conditions with contexts to water and soil conditions. This study is mainly focused on climate change impacts on wetland ecosystems over Harike and Keshopur wetland in Punjab region, India. Harike wetland is one of largest wetland in northern part of India, which is designated as Ramsar site. The Landsat imageries and climate parameters (includes land surface temperature and rainfall) have been used to extract spatial and temporal information over wetlands during period from 2009 to 2020. Landsat data have been analysed in two phases: Pre-monsoon and Post-Monsoon. Wetland area has been classified into five different classes: agriculture, water, built-up, aquatic vegetation1, and aquatic vegetation2. These analyses showed that wetland area has been reduced over a period of ten years and much area has been converted in agricultural land and built-up. The intense anthropogenic activities have resulted more changes in the wetland over both regions. The present study specifies that wetland ecosystem monitoring is essential for policy makers for sustainable management and also concluded that the significant reduction of highly biodiversity wetland area is required to conserve.