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@article{204970,
        author = {Abhijeet Chavan},
        title = {Impact of Land Use/Land Cover Change on Wildlife Habitat in Gautala Reserve Forest},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {13},
        number = {1},
        pages = {5403-5411},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=204970},
        abstract = {One of the primary causes of habitat loss, fragmentation, and decline of biodiversity in forest ecosystems throughout the world is the Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) change. This paper discusses how LULC change affects the wildlife habitat in the Gautala Reserve Forest in the Ajanta-Satmala range of the Western Ghats in Maharashtra, India. The use of multi-temporal satellite imagery and geospatial methods was used to evaluate the dynamics of land cover between 2015 and 2025. The Landsat and Sentinel imagery was analyzed by supervised classification and change detection analysis to determine transitions between five major land cover classes; forest, agriculture, built-up land, water bodies, and bare land. The findings indicate that despite the slight increase in the net forest cover in the study area, there were major spatial changes along the forest boundary. About 53.23 km2 of forest land was turned into agricultural land and 1.87 km2 into built-up areas, which means that the anthropogenic pressure is growing around the boundaries of the reserves. On the other hand, an area of about 63.90 km2 of agricultural land was converted to forest indicating potential natural regeneration or afforestation. Although the net forest area has increased, the spatial distribution of forest loss and regeneration suggests that there is a possibility of habitat fragmentation, loss of core forest areas and an increase in edge effects, which could adversely affect wildlife movement, habitat quality and ecological connectivity. The results indicate that the quality of habitat and spatial structure are more important to the conservation of wildlife than the total forest area. The paper concludes that sustainable land-use planning, preservation of the main patches of forests, ecological corridors restoration, and constant monitoring with the help of geospatial tools are essential in maintaining the wildlife habitats in the Gautala Reserve Forest landscape over the long term.},
        keywords = {Land Use/Land Cover Change, Wildlife Habitat, Habitat Fragmentation, Remote Sensing, GIS, Gautala Reserve Forest, Western Ghats, Landscape Ecology.},
        month = {June},
        }