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Swelter in the City: Population Distribution, Land Use Change and the Urban Heat Island Effect in Shillong, India

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Environmental Change in the Himalayan Region

Abstract

Shillong is a hill station in the eastern Himalayas, whose population has grown rapidly in recent years. This Chapter considers the land-use/landcover change (LULC) in Shillong using topographic map data of 1939 and Landsat satellite imageries of 2008 and 2013. Along with this population densities using gridded Landscan population datasets for 2008 and 2013 and thermal Landsat data were used to examine the links between population concentration, the urban heat island (UHI) effect and LULC. The results indicate a rapid loss of forest cover and an increase in the built up area and spiralling population densities in the latter. The UHI effect is also pronounced in areas with higher population densities and impervious surfaces. Changes in LULC and UHI will exacerbate the cities problems in the coming years as climate change brings about temperature increases.

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Acknowledgements

The population density maps were prepared using the LandScan (2008)™ and (2013)™ High Resolution global Population Data Set copyrighted by UT-Battelle, LLC, operator of Oak Ridge National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the United States Department of Energy. The United States Government has certain rights in this Data Set. Neither Ut-Battelle, LLC nor the United States Department of Energy, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of the data set.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, DCB Girls College, Jorhat, 785001, India

    Rashima Kachari

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  1. Rashima Kachari
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Correspondence to Rashima Kachari .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Gauhati University, Guwahati, India

    Anup Saikia

  2. Department of Geography & Planning, Sherubtse College, Royal University of Bhutan, Kanglung, Bhutan

    Pankaj Thapa

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Kachari, R. (2019). Swelter in the City: Population Distribution, Land Use Change and the Urban Heat Island Effect in Shillong, India. In: Saikia, A., Thapa, P. (eds) Environmental Change in the Himalayan Region. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03362-0_9

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