Published Paper Details:

The land cover of Mulshi taluk in Pune district over the last two decades, due to infrastructural development. Mulshi taluk in the Western part of Maharashtra encompasses the Western Ghats of India, which are one of the hotspots of biodiversity of the world. Over the last two decades, this area has seen many infrastructural changes urban develop along with the creation of lake cities, extension of highways leading to the coastal areas and development/sale of land. This increase in the urbanized area has put a strain on the water resources of Pune City. The objective of this paper is to detect the change in the land-use/cover of the Mulshi taluk and understand the drivers of change in the rural landscape. This study will help in identifying measures that need to be taken for sustainable development using geoinformatics. Post classification change detection has been performed between two images of the area from (1992 and 2011). The drivers of this were determined by field surveys and interviews with the local people. A future land cover scenario for the year 2020 has been predicted using Idrisi's Land Change Modeller (ILCM). The unplanned expansion of the built up areas into the surrounding parts will have a direct impact on the rural environment. The changes in agriculture indicate a trend towards a migration from traditional crops to cash crops like sugarcane.in other economically important crops in the study area.