| dc.description.abstract | Land-use and land-cover (LULC) change
research is a type of environmental research that is
intimately linked to socioeconomic development. At
present, the LULC changes are mainly occurred due
to physical developments and agricultural purposes.
Paddy is the major crop and mostly grown in Sri
Lanka. Hambantota district rank as fifth place in rice
production in Sri Lanka. Sooriyawewa is the driest
and mostly grown paddy Divisional Secretary
Division (DSD) in Hambantota District, but
nowadays there are so many reasons that hinder
paddy cultivation. This research aims to identify the
existing system for monitoring the LULC changes in
paddy cultivation and applicable Remote Sensing
techniques, then quantify the LULC changes over
paddy cultivation in Sooriyawewa during the past
four decades and finally examine the underlying
causes for LULC changes over the paddy. For this
research, downloaded Landsat images from 1980 to
2019 with a specified time gap and Supervised
classification was used for the land cover
classification for all images to detect the paddy
variation in this area. Obtained net changes between
1980-2019 are Paddy, Other crops, Forests,
Waterbodies, Built up areas and barren lands.
According to the LULC changes between 1980-2019,
there was a -15.50% decrease in paddy areas but
built-up areas, other crops significantly increase
11.97%, 10.08% respectively. This is a temporal
problem in this area and this study is essential for the
relevant authorities for decision making, preparing
urban development plans, where planned
infrastructural development and supervision, land
use planning, natural resource conservation and
environmental sustainability. | en_US |
