Pant, Daya Nand 
Landuse /land cover Change Pattern 
The spatial distribution of Change and No Change categories indicate their pattern in different locations (Fig. 3). The map 
shows that most of the changes have taken place surrounding the villages and Mussoorie town area and along roadsides. 
Out of total 64.0 km^ area of Mussoorie municipality , 17.2 Km ? or 26.9 % of total area has undergone changes. The 
maximum change has taken place in Oak forests followed by scrub/shrub, agriculture, habitation, and Oak -Pine, 
Miscellaneous and others in descending order (Table 1). The Mussoorie town area itself increased by 39 % during 35 years 
or 1% per year. Almost all these changes are negative. The increase in Pine forest and decrease in Oak forest indicate 
retrogression of forest quality due to high biotic pressure causing a drier condition of land. 
Impact of Changes 
The present and past conditions, the positive and negative trends experienced by the people of the area, traditional 
indigenous knowledge of the key informants and the available secondary information indicate that the impacts are in 
descending order of magnitude of less rainfall, less yields, less ground / spring water, less wildlife in forest area and more 
wildlife close to the village area (in average less) , violent and untimely rainfall, less snowfall and high temperature (Table 
4). Allthese are negative impacts towards the surrounding environment and the existing agro-ecosystem. 
  
  
  
Type of negative No of % of total 
impacts responses Responses 
Less rain fall 43 24.1 
Less yield 40 22.3 
Less ground/spring water 36 20.2 
More and less wildlife 21 11.8 
Violent and untimely rain 19 10.7 
Less snowfall 11 6.2 
High temperature 8 4.5 
Total 178 100.0 
  
Table 4. Impact of forest vegetation and landuse changes 
ACCURACY ESTIMATION 
Accuracy estimation has been carried out based on the ground verification of 95 points distributed over all the classes of 
map showing forest vegetation and landuse change dynamics. The field conditions of 1960 and 1985 have been assessed 
on the basis of site specific interviews and direct field observations. The distribution of points was carried out in 
accordance with the proportionate area of each class. The analysis of confusion matrix reflected the overall accuracy of 
85.%. . But the accuracy is considerably increasing when the change mapping units are merged into 5 change types. 
The maximum accuracy has been estimated as 100% where degraded forest was converted into lime stone quarry 
followed by no change, Oak to degraded forest, Oak to habitation, degraded forest into scrub/shrub and all others in 
descending order 
  
International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXIII, Part B7. Amsterdam 2000. 1117