Land Use/Land Cover Dynamics and Its Impact on LST in Thakurdwara, Moradabad, U.P. India

Indian economy gained fifth position in the world with the rapid growth since post- globalization. It is the result of technological developments and modernization of various industries such as manufacturing and services. This led to people moving from rural to urban areas seeking jobs and modern amenities. Such a rapid shift in the population has altered the Land Use and Land Cover (LULC). Assessment of LULC changes is essential for understanding landscape transformations. Thakurdwara, a Tehsil in Moradabad District, Uttar Pradesh, was chosen for this study. The population growth in Thakurdwara has significantly driven the city's rapid urbanization in the last two decades. In this study, Landsat 7 ETM + and Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS data of the same season were used for the years 2000 and 2023 to analyze the changes in LULC of the study area. ArcGIS Pro 2.9.0 software was employed for layer- stacking and pre-processing of the raw Landsat Data. A supervised classification using the Maximum Likelihood Classification (MLC) algorithm was performed to configure the changes. The results revealed rapid changes from pervious to impervious areas in Thakurdwara. Additionally, for the study period, the mean temperature increased by 1.87 °C. These findings will be valuable for future regional and urban planning, as well as agricultural management.