• Dr T Siva Prathap
• Y Yamini
• Dr Mohd Akhter Ali
• M Kamraju

Land use and land cover is an important component in understanding the interaction of the human activities with the environment. Mapping land use/land cover (LULC) changes at regional scales is essential for a wide range of applications, including landslides, erosion, land planning, global warming etc. LULC alteration (based specially on human activities), negatively affect the patterns of climate, the patterns of natural hazards and socio-economic dynamics in global and local scale. The Lankamalla reserved forest is dense forest in the surroundings of kadapa and its geographical extent is 498.67km2. In recent times, remote sensing and geographical information system (GIS) is extremely beneficial in assessing the land use land cover data analysis. Remote sensing is considered as a significant data source for forest monitoring purposes, and has been widely used for monitoring deforestation. LANDSAT 8(OLI) of 2014 and 2018 were downloaded from USGS Earth Explorer, for analyzing the trends in deforestation and land use land cover changes in Lankamalla forest and its neighbourhood. In image preprocessing, supervised classification has performed to classify the images into various land use classes using Digital Image Processing tools. The study area is classified in to 1. Dense forest, 2. Deciduous forest, 3. Agriculture land, 4. Water bodies and 5. Waste land. The Agriculture land is again sub dived into three classes a. Crop land, b. Fallow land and c. Plantation. The results indicates that during the last decade dense forest of the Lankamalla reserved forest area have been decreased about 46.55% (i.e, 223.86 km2) and 27.21% (i.e, 130.86km2) while Water bodies, Crop land decreased by 0.008%, 0.034% respectively. The study area consists of ten mandals, such as Atlur, Badvel, Bhramamgarimattam, Chennur, Kadapa, Khajipet, Sidhout, Mydukur, Vallur and Vontimitta. In the Sidhout area dense forest, Fallow land, Crop land, Plantation, Waste land have increased. The crop land increased from1.2% to 5.95%, fallow land increases from 10.93 to 23.01%, plantation increases from 2.8 to 20.04%, and waste land occupancy increases from 7.85 to 20.85 %.

Deforestation, LandUseLandCover Changes, Conservation planning. Remote Sensing and Geographical Information System (GIS), Opensource.

"CHANGE DETECTION IN LAND USE LAND COVER USING GEOSPATIAL TECHNOLOGY AND OPENSOURCE DATA IN LANKAMALLA FOREST AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD – A CASE STUDY IN ANDHRA PRADESH, INDIA", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 4, page no.557-573, April-2019, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1904795.pdf

"CHANGE DETECTION IN LAND USE LAND COVER USING GEOSPATIAL TECHNOLOGY AND OPENSOURCE DATA IN LANKAMALLA FOREST AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD – A CASE STUDY IN ANDHRA PRADESH, INDIA", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 4, page no. pp557-573, April-2019, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1904795.pdf