Assessing Pattern of Spatio-temporal Change in NCT of Delhi and its Peri-urban Areas using Geospatial Techniques

Abstract

Big Cities like Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi, etc., are expanding very fast mainly due to changing socio-economic activities which in turn put pressure on land and natural environment of the cities. Rapid development of cities without proper planning and ecological concern has been a great challenge to the urban planners as well the policy makers to manage a livable environment for city dwellers. Development of new urban areas and expansion of existing cities is inevitable as it’s an essential part of sustainable economy but uncontrolled and haphazard urban growth may raise serious problems related to environmental pollution, changes in urban micro climate, loss of biodiversity and ecological balance, human and traffic congestion, etc. Actual information on spatial distribution of different land use and land cover has multi-dimensional utility in planning and management of the land resources which is perceived as a key factor in the process of development of an area. However, optimal use of land resource requires quantitative information on spatial distribution as well as spatio-temporal changes of various land use and land cover in an area. In this context remote sensing data and GIS techniques are well accepted and established tool for assessing the land dynamics. For this paper landsat data of 1977, 2003 and 2014 were used to assess the spatio-temporal change over NCT of Delhi and its per-urban areas within a buffer of 15 km from the outer boundary of NCT of Delhi. In order to identify the urban growth and associated land use land cover changes, change detection analysis was carried out. The study reveals that areas under different land use and land cover has changed during 1977–2003 and the level of change recorded maximum 14.5% increase in low-density built-up and 8.79% high-density built-up areas but sparse vegetation recorded 12.20% decrease in the NCT of Delhi. On the other hand there is just little change, i.e. an increase of about 9.09% in the low-density built-up and almost little change in the rest of the classes in the peri-urban areas. Furthermore the result shows that during 2003–2014 there is large scale change, i.e. 19.63% in high-density built-up area has been recorded at the cost of 8.4% sparse vegetation and 4.4% agricultural in the NCT of Delhi. In the peri-urban areas there is decrease of agricultural land of about 13% during last decades.