Land use patterns and urbanization in the holy city of Varanasi, India: a scenario

Abstract

Rapid urbanization and increasing land use changes due to population and economic growth in selected landscapes is being witnessed of late in India and other developing countries. The cities are expanding in all directions resulting in large-scale urban sprawl and changes in urban land use. The spatial pattern of such changes is clearly noticed on the urban fringes or city peripheral rural areas than in the city center. In fact, this is reflected in changing urban land use patterns. There is an urgent need to accurately describe land use changes for planning and sustainable management. In the recent times, remote sensing is gaining importance as vital tool in the analysis and integration of spatial data. This study intends to estimate land use pattern in a planned and unplanned urban setup and also to analyze the impact of change in land use pattern in the Varanasi urban environment. The results indicate that the planned urban setup had a higher tree cover to that of unplanned area in the Varanasi City, although a considerable disparity existed within the planned urban setups. The results emphasize the need to critically review concepts of urban planning and give more consideration to the preservation and management of urban tree cover/greenspace.

Potential of NPP-VIIRS Nighttime Light Imagery for Modeling the Regional Economy of China

“…A typical example is using remotely sensed optical imagery for mapping the urban land use distribution, which is an important indicator of the economic status of a country [3][4][5]. In addition, remote sensing can also be used to investigate agriculture [6,7], fishery [8,9] and forestry [10], which are important components of a country's economy.…”

Graying, greening and fragmentation in the rapidly expanding Indian city of Bangalore

“…Many Indian cities have witnessed the large scale destruction of tens of thousands of street trees, and the clearing of vegetated plots, wetlands and other natural habitats within the city to make way for buildings, industries and infrastructure projects (Kumar, Mukherjee, Sharma, & Raghubanshi, 2010;Nagendra & Gopal, 2010). Indian cities, and indeed most cities from economically developing countries, also tend to differ from better researched North American and European cities in the density and spatial form of urban land cover distribution, with greater compactness and population density, lower patch complexity and less open space (Huang, Lu, & Sellers, 2007).…”

“…Urban growth in India is also much less directed by state policies or colonial legacies than for many other parts of the world, resulting in patterns of growth that are irregular and complex, particularly in newer urban settlements located at the periphery. Yet, even within Indian cities, there can be significant differences in the planned new extensions at the periphery, which tend to have more open space and vegetated areas, as compared to the densely built inner city areas that tend to be more congested (Kumar et al, 2010).…”

Assessment of Ambient Air Quality Resulting from Anthropogenic Emissions

“…The high concentration of the pollutants recorded in these studies could be blamed on the government of Nigeria at all level for not discharging it duty of regulation to save the life of the future generation as such most industries spew air pollutants into the environment without the fear of the impact on the inhabitants of the area. The lack of provision of stable electricity in the country has also attributed to the high pollutant in this area since people now solely depend on generators for source of electricity also the lack of proper housing provision by the government has also contributed immensely to the level of pollutant in the air since most people now cut down trees with the view of building of houses [33][34][35].…”