INTRODUCTION

Forests are integral part in the socio-economic, ecological, and cultural fabric of tropical regions (Mbuvi and Boon, 2008). Humans depend either directly or indirectly on forests to an extent of 80% in developing world (FAO, 1997, Ahenkan and Boon, 2008). Livelihood of the local people is sustained by both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, the extent of support depends on the health of the respective ecosystems. Altering the ecological integrity would impact the ecological goods and services affecting the livelihood of the dependent population. Development approaches for improving the quality of dependent populations towards the economic advancement needs to consider social, ecological, psychological and political processes (World Bank, 2006). Unplanned developmental activities though provided employment and resources to the handful influential sections but have deprived majority of native population of natural resources. The adverse effects of the unplanned developmental activities are evident from alteration of natural topography, deforestation, soil erosion, loss of nutrients in the soil, sedimentation, soil compaction, spread of invasive exotic species, fragmentation forests, enhanced human-animal conflicts,  etc. due to changes in vegetation structure, growth, biomass and food productivity (Daigle, 2010, Rawat et al., 2013, El Baroudy and Moghanm, 2014). Many countries have overexploited the forests, fisheries, and mineral wealth by polluting water, air to accelerate economic growth (Prizzia, 2002, Barnett and Pauling, 2005). Deforestation in Asia, estimated at between 0.9% and 2.1% per annum has direct and profound impacts such as lowered ecological flows in rivers, flash floods, etc. The ever increasing demand of resources has led to fragmentation of forests and deforestation endangering highly productive ecosystems with changes in climate and other stressors. The cumulative effects of developmental activities are evident from the extent of fragmentation of forests, which is the manifestation of the changes in landscape patterns (Ramachandra and Uttam Kumar, 2011). Disturbance corridors created by forest fragmentation alter the natural mix of habitats and species by providing conditions suitable for early succession in plants and animals (Apps and McLellan, 2006). Construction of dams (Fu et al., 1998, Ramachandra et al., 2010), river diversions and linear projects (road and rail network) have impacted on hydrologic regime, aquatic habitat, the extinction of species, etc. (Rosenberg et al., 1997, Renofalt et al., 2010). Now there is an increasing concern of the potential impact of hydrologic alterations on biodiversity, and studies have begun to focus on the environmental and social consequences of large scale developmental projects (Rosenberg et al., 2000, Ramachandra et al., 2000, Qi and Ruan, 2005) in ecologically sensitive regions.

Ecosystem degradation due to the unplanned developmental  activities trigger adverse impact on natural resources evident from barren hill tops, decreased water flow in streams, etc. Developmental activities impose direct costs to the dependent communities due to the loss of goods and services and indirect costs in terms of loss of rural lands (Dasgupta and Shaw, 2016). Conversion of forests for agriculture expansion, human settlements, infrastructure, mining, etc. is rampant in recent times. Illegal and unscientific human alteration of land use pattern is referred as encroachments (National Commission on Agriculture, 1976). This situation is a consequence of increase in demands for food, rising market prices for commodities (Kunwar et al., 2009), and also due to the lack of enforceable ownership rights to forest property. The slash and burn cultivation practiced predominantly earlier is banned in India due to proven ecological consequences. Recent forest clearances for agriculture and horticulture purposes is noticed in forest areas with good drainage network and soil fertility (Kanninen et al., 2007, Stickler et al., 2007) by market forces (Scoones et al., 1992, Neumann, 2000). Unplanned developmental activities coupled with widespread encroachments have affected the goods and services of forests. These areas are abandoned in recent time due to lack of productivities with the mismanagement of natural resources and economic pressures. The restoration on these lands can offer greater potential for biodiversity recovery, carbon sequestration and enhanced ecosystem services (Omeja et al., 2012). This requires inventorying, mapping and periodical monitoring to assess the agents of changes for mitigating deforestation apart from assessing the efficacy of forest protection, regeneration and utilization of resources (Suwanwerakamtorn et al., 2011, Ramachandra et al., 2014).

Data acquired remotely through space borne sensors at regular intervals and analysis using GIS with GPS (Global positioning system) has aided in the estimation of biophysical characteristics of land surfaces and dynamics for the sustainable management of  a landscape (Ramachandra et al., 2012). The knowledge spatio-temporal LULC changes and visualization of future growth is essential for natural resources planning and also to overcome the problems associated with the haphazard and uncontrolled land cover changes (Bharath et al., 2014). There have been a number of modeling approaches through multi criteria analysis in decision making (MCADM) such as Markov-CA, AHP, artificial neural network (ANN) etc., which are either used independently or combined in hybrid models (Keshtkar and Voigt, 2016) to forecast changes (Taha and Rostam, 2011, Bharath and Ramachandra, 2016) and for sustainable management of natural resources (Belton and Stewart, 2002; Kazemi et., al., 2016). Fuzzy AHP proved appropriate in in fuzzy environments for MCADM, for modelling landscape dynamics in recent years (Saaty, 1988, Mendoza and Martins, 2006, Aithal and Ramachandra, 2016). The uncertainty in MCADM can be explained through fuzzy AHP that provide visualization of transitions for immediate judgments. Integration of Fuzzy AHP with CA helps in prioritization and quantifying the role of drivers involved in the landscape conversion. The fuzzy-AHP-CA aids in deriving the weights from fuzzy pairwise comparison matrices using change of relational measurement indicators by a set of fuzzy weights, which are useful for decision making through multiple criteria. Knowledge of landscape dynamics and visualization of likely LULC transitions would help in taking location specific ecosystem approaches of conservation measures by involving all stakeholders help in the management of natural resources. The ecosystem approach accounts ecologically sensitive areas, habitats of endangered (threatened) species, rare and “keystone” (ecologically important) species and also likely threats to the biodiversity. Main objective of the current work is to,

1. Quantification of land use changes during 1973 to 2013.
2. Assessment of the role of agents such as developmental projects in LULC dynamics during 1973 to 2013.
3. Visualisation of landscape dynamics and likely land use in 2022 using multi criteria decision making.
4. Measuring the impact of local agents (such as encroachments) role in deforestation, using geo-informatics.