The tourism industry in Ladakh experienced significant growth after 1974, leading to an indiscriminate transformation in Ladakh’s LU/LC pattern through various activities, such as expanding agricultural land to support the increasing demand for vegetables and fruits and infrastructure development (guest houses and hotels) for tourists. Recognizing these LU/LC changes is crucial for prospective Nubra Valley land management planning. The present analysis utilizes geospatial techniques for mapping and monitoring the LU/LC changes in the Nubra Valley watershed, Ladakh, from 1992 to 2023. The Landsat series multispectral satellite images were used to classify the five major LU/LC categories: barren land, built-up, snow cover, vegetation and water bodies. The supervised classification technique with a maximum likelihood approach was used to classify the satellite image. The accuracy assessment of LU/LC was evaluated using the error matrix and kappa coefficient. The overall accuracy and kappa accuracy of classified images was 88.24% and 84.86% in 1992, 94.62% and 93.05% in 2009, and 98.81% and 98.46% in 2023, respectively. Results reveal that from 1992 to 2023, LU/LC change detection analysis shows that class vegetation, built-up, and barren land have increased by 3.13%, 0.37%, and 0.07%, respectively, from 1992 to 2023. Other classes, such as snow cover and waterbodies, decreased by 3.77% and 0.09%, respectively, from 1992 to 2023. Thus, this study envisions that the results might deliver details to decision-makers for better sustainable land management and utilisation of natural resources.