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Wetlands are basically areas of land which have moist soil or water. Areas which are covered with water seasonally, periodically or permanentaly are called wetlands. Wetlands helps controlling floods, helps in purifying water and ground water recharge and are also used as grazing lands. It also helps in providing habitat to animals. Due to urbanization and unplanned changes wetlands have shrinked and many of them have been completely lost.Wetlands of rural areas, primarily ponds and lakes that are constructed for drinking water and domestic needs but nowadays villages wetlands are mainly used for washing clothes, cattle bathing, etc. With urbanization wetlands becomes useless and treated as wastelands and are considered as not any use, which has ultimately adversely affected the ecosystem.
Inclination of the present study was to understand the spatiotemporal changes of the wetlands of Vadodara city. Methodology for the study was followed by Land Use Land Cover mapping of the wetlands in Vadodara city using open source data from various platforms like Google Earth and QGIS software. The wetland boundaries were marked by referring to authentic maps of government departments. Analysis of various landuse features like water bodies, vegetation, and built-up area was done using GIS software. Ground truthing and reconnaissance was done to verify interpretation of RS data. Water storage capacity of water lands was assessed using factors like area of wetlands and average depth using VMSS data and interaction with locals.
