Examining the impact of regional land use and land cover changes on temperature: the case of Eastern India

This study investigates the temperature trend (warming or cooling) over Eastern India during the period 1981-2006 and its response to the changes in land use and land cover (LULC). The 'Observation minus Reanalysis' (OMR) method is used to investigate the LULC impact on the temperatures over the region. We find that the Eastern India got warmer at a rate of 0.077 degrees C per decade during 1981-2006 and the changes in LULC contributed towards warming during 1991-2006 at a rate of similar to 0.2 degrees C per decade. We investigated the LULC changes during the period 1981-2006 over Eastern India by using satellite datasets for four different time periods viz. 1981, 1991, 2001, and 2006. Results indicate that shrubs/small vegetations, agricultural/fallow land and open forest are increased by 0.15%, 0.1% and 0.07% respectively over Eastern India during the period 1981-2006. On the other hand, bare land/snow cover and dense forest are decreased by 0.23% and 0.09% respectively over the region. Overall results indicate that the cooling is due to the conversion of open forest/shrubs/small vegetation into dense forest/agricultural/fallow land and the warming is due to the conversions of shrubs/agricultural/fallow land into bare land.