Dynamics of Urbanization and Its Impact on Land-Use/Land-Cover: A Case Study of Megacity Delhi

Abstract

The rapid expansion of urban areas due to rise in population and economic growth is increasing additional demand on natural resources thereby causing land-use changes especially in megacities. Therefore, serious problems associated with rapid development such as additional infrastructure, informal settlements, environmental pollution, destruction of ecological structure and scarcity of natural resources has been studied carefully using remote sensing and GIS technologies for a rapidly grown megacity namely, Delhi. The present work evaluates the land use/land cover (LULC) changes and urban expansion in Mega city Delhi and highlights the major impact of rapid urbanization and population growth on the land cover changes which needs immediate attention. The results indicate that the city is expanding towards its peripheral region with the conversion of rural regions in to urban expansions. Built-up area of Delhi witnessed an overall increment from 540.7 km² to 791.96 km² or 16.86% of the total city area (1,490 km² ) during the study period 1997 to 2008 which mainly came from agriculture land, waste land, scrub-land, sandy areas and water bodies. The increment in forest cover of 0.5 % is very small when considering the increment in built up category to 17%. Total area of waterbodies has reduced by 52.9% in a ten year period (58.26 km² in 1997 to 27.43 km² in 2008) with shallow waterbodies now having a dismal presence. LULC changes are studied with the urban growth parameters such as population, vehicles, gross state domestic product etc. The results lay emphasis on the concepts of urban planning to be applied such that more consideration is towards the preservation and management of natural land use classes which will increase the quality of life in an urban environment

Urban boundary extraction and sprawl analysis using Landsat images: A case study in Wuhan, China

“…Landscape heterogeneity often varies between rural and downtown areas (Kane et al, 2014;Lopez, Bocco, Mendoza, & Duhau, 2001;Mohan, Pathan, Narendrareddy, Kandya, & Pandey, 2011;Schneider & Woodcock, 2008;Siciliano, 2012;Tian, Qi, & Zhang, 2012), reflecting differences in land-use diversity including patch size and land-use class types (Haregeweyn et al, 2012;McGarigal & Marks, 1995;Plexida, Sfougaris, Ispikoudis, & Papanastasis, 2014). Recently, entropy theory has been shown to be capable for analyzing land-use diversity (Morelli, Pruscini, Santolini, & Perna, 2013).…”

Inter-Seasonal Variations of Surface Temperature in the Urbanized Environment of Delhi Using Landsat Thermal Data

“…Benali et al [28] and Zakšek and Oštir [29] estimated surface temperature using MODIS data. Mallick et al [30] relied on Landsat data while, Mohan et al [31] used LISS III data for establishing relationship between urbanization and land use/cover of Delhi. On the other hand, Kant et al [21] based the research using ASTER data and Roy et al [32] by installing temperature recording instruments over Delhi.…”

Thermal Comfort At The Street Corridor Around Public Places, Case Study Alun-Alun Malang City

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