Two-decade Spatio-temporal Land Use and Cover Changes in District Shangla of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Changes in land use land cover (LULC) play a vital role in developing and sustainable management of natural resources. The northern mountains of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa-Pakistan are rich in biodiversity and provide fragmented and fragile ecosystem services while vulnerability to the rapid changes in LULC with irreversible impacts on ecosystems, especially in district Shangla. Real-time monitoring and assessment are essential to understand such changes in LULC. In the current study, spatio-temporal changes of LULC were obtained from MODIS (MCD12Q1) product from 2001–2018 to examine LULC in the district Shangla of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa-Pakistan. LULC types were classified into seven major classes: evergreen forest, savannas, grasslands, permanent wetlands, croplands, natural vegetation, and barren land.The result indicated that grasslands (17.04–12.84%) and cropland (34.73–18.12%) decreased significantly due to over population pressure coupled by natural hazards, while savannas (40.63–49.25%), permanent wetlands (0.03–0.07%), and natural vegetation (3.13–14.96%), were increased significantly as a result of the different internations for the conservations in the area. As a result, the development of LULC maps will play a vital role in sustainable management of LULC in northern Pakistan due to the lack of ground and reliable data towards the targets of sustainable development goals in the area.