• Sakil Ansari
• Shamsul Haque Siddiqui

Land use refers to the utilization of land by man for specific activities to fulfil their needs over a given time scale. The study regarding land use pattern is of prime concern as it involves the concepts of optimizing the land use potential, land evaluation, and land use planning. This study examines the changes in land use both spatially and temporally between the periods of 2000-01 to 2014-15 in West Bengal. Data are obtained from existing secondary sources for the period of 2000-01 and 2014-15. Arc GIS is used to draw pie charts to show the regional variation of the utilization of different categories of land, and simple statistical methods are used for displaying the changes therein. It has been observed that the total reporting area of West Bengal has decreased by 3600 hectares from 2000-01 to 2014-15. All the nine categories of land use experience negative growth in terms of area cover except Area under non-agricultural use, which shows positive growth (27486 hectares increased). Thus, it can be concluded that a shift of land use from agricultural towards non-agricultural uses has been observed in West Bengal.

Land Use Pattern, Agricultural Planning, Compound Growth Rate (CGR), Land Utilization.

"Spatio-Temporal Variation of Land Use Pattern in West Bengal", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 5, page no.3291-3302, May-2019, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1905V51.pdf

"Spatio-Temporal Variation of Land Use Pattern in West Bengal", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 5, page no. pp3291-3302, May-2019, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1905V51.pdf