Solid Waste Dumping Site Suitability Analysis for Pachmarhi Town of Madhya Pradesh using Remote Sensing and Geographical Information System.

Solid waste dumping is a serious problem in the urban areas and it is more serious if the area is situated in forest and ecologically sensitive areas such as Pachmarhi. The main objective of this study was to identify the potential areas suitable for solid waste dumping sites for Pachmarhi town and its surroundings. The main data used for this study were Liss-III Images with a spatial resolution of 23.5 m; digital elevation model (DEM) with 30m spatial resolution, and ground control point (GCP) collected by ground point survey (GPS) and topographical map of the study area. Multi criteria analysis methods along with the remote sensing techniques and geographic information system (GIS) were used to derive the results. Arc map was used to finalise the areas levelled as high, moderate, less suitable, and unsuitable regions of the study area. The results indicate that most of the area comes under unsuitable and only 4.04 % is suitable. The selected areas fall on north to east of the town where slope gradient is low, surface water bodies absent and forest degraded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]