Assessing the Impacts of Land Use and Land Cover Changes on Organic Carbon Content and Electrical Conductivity of Soil in North East Italy and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan

Abstract

The present paper discusses the phenomena of land use and land cover (LULC) which has undergone constant changes over the past few decades due to major variations in the environment caused by anthropogenic and natural factors and its effect on the organic carbon and electronic conductivity of the soil in both the study area, also to compare the changes between these study area .A comprehensive review of the studies has done in this paper which states that there were certain changes from year 2018-21 in the land use of both study area. Soil analysis were also carried out related over OC and EC which were impacted by LULC during these years from 2018-21, the dominated land cover in Pakistan was crops and settlement in which both of them changed a lot, crops were decreased from 44.63% to 41.83% on the other side settlement was increased from 23.01% to 28.37% in return it effected soil in terms of OC and EC The central part of the study area of Pakistan have experienced high OC The study area of Italy also experience land degradation the major land cover were trees, crops and built up as trees which were remained unchanged because there was very slight difference through the year 2018-21 where crops decrease from 46.42% to 45.74% and built-up increased from 12.99 %to 3.52% and this degradation effected the soil in terms of EC and OC. Overall this study highlights the need to plan and manage LULC changes and Nature-based solutions should be applied throughout the study region to reduce its effects on the soil.