SINDHUNIVERSITYRESEARCHJOURNAL(SCIENCE SERIES) Environmental Assessment of Land Use Land Cover Using Remote Sensing and GIS: A Case Study of Khirthar National Park A. H. CHUGHTAI, H. ABBASI, S. K. SIDDIQUI Centre for Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Pakistan Received 11 th November 2018 and Revised 16 th June2019 1. INTRODUCTION The assessment of land use land cover and monitoring its changes currently becomes preliminary issue because of growing human population which subsequently disturbs the natural environment and the land cover types (Qian, et al., 2007) while these land cover changes are essential for development (Dhinwa, 1992) therefore planning of land use is necessary for the development of any region(Agenda, (1992). Understanding the change dynamics of land use land cover and its pattern is significantly essential due to increasing anthropogenic activities (Halimi, et al.,2017) (Pasha, 2016), which is at alarming stage and can have direct affect to the natural ecosystem, food availability (Minale,2013) and these increasing human activities are the main driving forces (Vitousek, 1994) which converts the land cover from one type to other and also threatened to the natural resources (Zewdie, and. Csaplovies, 2017). The conversion of these land cover types from one land form to other is a clear evidence of the interaction between nature and human(Fasona, and Omojola. 2005). And this interaction has not only disturbs the natural ecosystem but also destroyed the natural resources with the respect of time (Clevers, 2005) such as National Park and protected areas which are almost 7000 around the world (Mc Neely, 1992) and according to (Consortium, 2006) 13.4% of the Earth’s surface is covered by protected areas and is considered to be much important for the conservation of natural environment, biodiversity and restrict the human interference in such protected areas which is the most challenging issue (Das, 1996).These long term land use land cover change impacts of anthropogenic activities has tainted the conservation processes (Wessels, 2004) (Soulé, 1991) (Sala 2000) (Araújo, 2004) and are important to monitor (Lambin, and Strahlers, 1994) (Lunetta, 2006) in such protected and National Park areas. These land use land cover changes were difficult to monitor larger areas in short time but remote sensing technology along with GIS tools made it easy not only to assess and monitor but also provide information of past scenarios and predicts the future losses. Land use land cover change is the main application of remote sensing for the assessment of long-term changes especially vegetation cover and its change dynamics at regional scale (Lunetta, 2006) (Reed, 2006) (Pettorelli, 2005) (John, and Nellis, 1991). The aim and importance of this research paper is to detect and use land cover changes for sustainable monitoring and assessment of Khirthar National Park using supervised classification Maximum Likelihood Algorithm to be applied onmulti-spectral30 meter resolution Land sat TM and OLI & TIRS sensor data because of free available on https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov and inspire every Abstract. National Park area is a natural reserve with an outstanding beauty having rich biodiversity, natural eco-system and sustainable environment is a gift from nature to conserve. It is extremely important to monitor the sustainability of National Park by extracting land use land cover change information over the period of time using satellite imagery which is the main application of change detection. The aim of this research study is to assess the land use land cover change at Khirthar National Park by acquiring multispectral Land sat satellite imagery to detect decadal information from 1992 to 2019 using supervised classification Maximum Likelihood classifier. The Land sat satellite data used in this research study was almost of the summer season to assess land use land cover change using supervised classification Maximum Likelihood Classifier and results showed increasing trend in agriculture while decreasing trend in natural vegetation at Khirthar National Park which is a clear indication of increasing anthropogenic activities. The supervised classification Maximum Likelihood Algorithm used to detect land use land cover change at Khirthar National Park results overall accuracy in the year 1992, 2000, 2010 and 2019 was 99.7446%, 99.4536%, 99.6495% and 96.7530% while the kappa statistics results achieved in the year 1992, 2000, 2010 and 2019 was 0.9951, 0.9879, 0.9648 and 0.9503. These increasing human activities will not only disturbs the ecology of National Park but also will impact on the local flora and fauna of the park, therefore it is highly recommended to prevent further loss of biodiversity, natural eco-system and the sustainable management for such natural heritage. Keywords: Remote Sensing; NDVI; LST; National Park; Biodiversity. SindhUniv. Res. Jour. (Sci. Ser.) Vol. 51 (04) 695-702 (2019) http://doi.org/10.26692/sujo/2019.12.110 Email: ah_chughtai18@yahoo.com Ali Hassan Chughtai, habibullah.abbasi@usindh.edu.pkHabibullahAbbasi