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Quantifying the Ecological Stress of Urbanisation in a Million-plus City of Eastern India

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Abstract

Urban expansion now plays the most effective role in the loss of natural ecosystems by directly altering the landscape configuration and intensifying the ecological stress. The impact is not only confined to those areas where the natural landscape is altered by built-up use; the adjacent areas are also experiencing the adverse effects of urban expansion. But this adjacency effect is often neglected or not much discussed by the scholars or researchers. On the other hand, in India, the issues in smaller cities (as compared to the cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, etc.) are usually overlooked because of their size, and as a consequence, the issues grow faster. The present study explores the ecological stress on Asansol city, which is one of the fastest growing cities in India, using a landscape adjacency-based mechanism. The result reveals that during the last 30 years (1990–2020), ecological stress on the city has been estimated as reached up to 78%. At the micro-scale (10 sq. km grid), the average stress level has been amplified to 84% (extreme condition). Hence, this study can provide a suitable conceptual basis for the city planner, authorities, and any government body responsible for maintaining the sustainability of the natural city sphere. Moreover, the present methodology of the study combines both the inner-city and city-margin ecological stress due to expansion of built-up area, so it could be applied with more functionality for further scientific studies in the future.

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All the Landsat images were downloaded from the official website of USGS (U.S Geological Survey) earth explorer.

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Acknowledgements

The corresponding author thankfully acknowledges the University Grants Commission (UGC) for the provision of the Junior Research Fellowship (UGC-JRF). Authors are also thankful to the anonymous reviewers and the editorial board for providing valuable comments to enhance the quality of the manuscript.

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No funding was received to assist with the preparation of this manuscript.

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  1. Department of Geography, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, Bolpur, West Bengal, India

    Pathik Ankur & Krishnendu Gupta

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  1. Pathik Ankur
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  2. Krishnendu Gupta
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Correspondence to Pathik Ankur.

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Ankur, P., Gupta, K. Quantifying the Ecological Stress of Urbanisation in a Million-plus City of Eastern India. J Indian Soc Remote Sens 50, 2025–2039 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12524-022-01581-0

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