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

Abstract 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 field 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...