Monitoring land use/land cover change detection and urban expansion with remote sensing and gis techniques in Anantnag district of Kashmir valley Jamal Saleha1*, Ahmad Wani Suhail2**, MD Ali Ashif2, Sharma Amit2 1Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh 2Research Fellow, Department of Geography, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh *e-mail: salehajm@gmail.com
**wanisuhailgeo@gmail.com
Online published on 30 May, 2021. Abstract Urbanisation is a common phenomenon that represents the demographic change from rural areas to urban areas. Urbanisation, as such, is not perceived as a threat to the environment and development, but it is unplanned urban sprawl that affects the accessibility to amenities and land-use of any region. This unexpected increasing rate of urbanisation has its drawbacks. It is mainly driven by unorganised expansion, increased immigration, and rapidly growing population. In this context, LULC changes are considered one of the key constituents in current strategies for observing environmental changes and managing natural resources. The total area investigated for the present study was 2917 km2 in 1998 and 2018, respectively. The study quantitatively characterised and highlighted the dynamics of LULC and urban expansion concerning the growing population in the study area using remote sensing and GIS techniques. The analysis of the results of our study reveals that in 1998, the built-up area in the study area was 25.89 km2' which in the year 2018 covered a new urbanised area of about 16.74 km2, thereby, registering a growth rate of about +65%. However, cultivated area, i.e. agriculture, registered a negative growth rate of about-6%. Similarly, the other categories of LULC which marked a positive growth rate in their respective areas are Horticulture (+34%), Plantation (+38.7%), Snow (+4.1%) and Wasteland (+3.1%). The other categories with negative growth rate are Water bodies (−23.5%) and Forest (−6.8%). The study reveals that the pace of urban expansion is very rapid, which may have deteriorating impacts of the fragile environs of the study area. Thus, with this rapid growth rate of population and changing patterns of LULC in the study area will result in ever-increasing stress on city area of Anantnag district. Top Key Words Urban expansion, Land Use/Land Cover, Anantnag, Himalayan region, Remote Sensing and GIS.. Top |