Dynamics of Urbanization and Its Impact on Land-Use/Land-Cover: A Case Study of Megacity Delhi

Manju Mohan, Subhan K. Pathan, Kolli Narendrareddy, Anurag Kandya, Sucheta Pandey

.

DOI: 10.4236/jep.2011.29147                

Abstract

The rapid expansion of urban areas due to rise in population and economic growth is increasing additional demand on natural resources thereby causing land-use changes especially in megacities. Therefore, serious problems associated with rapid development such as additional infrastructure, informal settlements, environmental pollution, destruction of ecological structure and scarcity of natural resources has been studied carefully using remote sensing and GIS technologies for a rapidly grown megacity namely, Delhi. The present work evaluates the land use/land cover (LULC) changes and urban expansion in Mega city Delhi and highlights the major impact of rapid urbanization and population growth on the land cover changes which needs immediate attention. The results indicate that the city is expanding towards its peripheral region with the conversion of rural regions in to urban expansions. Built-up area of Delhi witnessed an overall increment from 540.7 km² to 791.96 km² or 16.86% of the total city area (1,490 km² ) during the study period 1997 to 2008 which mainly came from agriculture land, waste land, scrub-land, sandy areas and water bodies. The increment in forest cover of 0.5 % is very small when considering the increment in built up category to 17%. Total area of waterbodies has reduced by 52.9% in a ten year period (58.26 km² in 1997 to 27.43 km² in 2008) with shallow waterbodies now having a dismal presence. LULC changes are studied with the urban growth parameters such as population, vehicles, gross state domestic product etc. The results lay emphasis on the concepts of urban planning to be applied such that more consideration is towards the preservation and management of natural land use classes which will increase the quality of life in an urban environment.

Keywords

Satellite Imagery, Landuse-Landcover Distribution, Urban Planning, Built-Up Areas, Urban Growth Parameters, Change Detection

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

[1]	United Nations Population Fund, “The State of World Population 2007: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth,” United Nations Publications, Chapter 1, 2007.
[2]	E. Lopez, G. Bocco, M. Mendoza and E. Duhau, “Predicting Land Cover and Land Use Change in the Urban Fringe a Case in Morelia City, Mexico,” Landscape and Urban Planning, Vol. 55, No. 4, 2001, pp. 271-285.
[3]	H. Alphan, “Land Use Change and Urbanization in Adana, Turkey,” Land Degradation and Development, Vol. 14, No. 6, 2003, pp. 575-586. doi:10.1002/ldr.581
[4]	N. B. Grimm, J. M. Grove, S. T. A. Pickett and C. L. Redman, “Integrated Approach to Long-Term Studies of Urban Ecological Systems,” Bioscience, Vol. 50, No. 7, 2000, pp. 571-584. doi:10.1641/0006-3568(2000)050[0571:IATLTO]2.0.CO;2
[5]	B. L. Turner, “Local Faces, Global Flows: The Role of Land Use and Land Cover in Global Environmental Change,” Land Degradation and Development, Vol. 5, 1994, pp. 71-78. doi:10.1002/ldr.3400050204
[6]	D. A. Stow and D. M. Chen, “Sensitivity of Multi-Tem- poral NOAA AVHRR Data of an Urbanizing Region to Land Use/Cover Changes and Misregistration,” Remote Sensing of Environment, Vol. 80, 2002, pp. 297-307. doi:10.1016/S0034-4257(01)00311-X
[7]	A. G. O. Yeh and X. Li, “Economic Development and Agricultural Land Loss in the Pearl River Delta, China,” Habitat International, Vol. 23, 1999, pp. 373-390. doi:10.1016/S0197-3975(99)00013-2
[8]	Sustainable Development Unit, South Asia Region, “Dhaka: Improving Living Conditions for the Urban Poor,” Report No. 35824-BD, 2007.
[9]	H. S. Sudhira and T. V. Ramachandra, “Characterizing Urban Sprawl from Remote Sensing Data and Using Landscape Metrics,” 10th International Conference on Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management, PR Brazil, 2007. http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in/11834/
[10]	A. Rahman, “Application of Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques for Urban Environmental Mamangement and Sustainable Development of Delhi, India,” Applied Re- mote Sensing for Urban Planning, Governance and Sus- tainability, Springer-Verlag Publishers, New York, 2007, pp. 165-197.
[11]	Census of India, “Provisional Population Totals,” Office of Registrar General of India, Government of India, New Delhi, 1991 and 2001. http://censusindia.gov.in/
[12]	M. Mohan, Lalit Dagar and B. R. Gurjar, “Preparation and Validation of Gridded Emission Inventory of Criteria Air Pollutants and Identification of Emission Hotspots for Megacity Delhi,” Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, Vol. 130, 2007, pp. 323-339. doi:10.1007/s10661-006-9400-9
[13]	M. Netzband and A. Rahman, “Urban Remote Sensing for a Fast-Growing Megacity: Delhi, India,” SPIE Inter- national Society Advancing an Interdisciplinary Approach to the Science and Application of Light, Berlin, Germany, 2007. http://spie.org/x17987.xml
[14]	T. V. Ramchandra and U. Kumar, “GRDSS for Land Use, Land Cover Dynamics Analysis,” Proceedings of the FOSS/GRASS Users Conference, Bankok, Thiland, 2004.
[15]	P. J. Hardin, M. W. Jackson and S. M. Otterstrom, “Map- ping, Measuring and Modeling Urban Growth,” Geo- spatial technologies in urban environments: Policy, prac- tice and pixels, 2007, pp. 141-176.
[16]	M. K. Ridd and J. J. Liu, “A Comparison of Four Algo- rithms for Change Detection in an Urban Environment,” Remote Sensing of Environment, Vol. 63, 1998, pp. 95- 100. doi:10.1016/S0034-4257(97)00112-0
[17]	C. Weber and A. Puissant, “Urbanization Pressure and Modeling of Urban Growth: Example of the Tunis Metropolitan Area,” Remote Sensing of Environment, Vol. 86, 2003, pp. 341-352. doi:10.1016/S0034-4257(03)00077-4
[18]	A. M. Dewan and Y. Yamaguchi, “Land Use and Land Cover Change in Greater Dhaka, Bangladesh Using Remote Sensing to Promote Sustainable Urbanization,” Applied Geography, Vol. 29, 2009, pp. 390-401. doi:10.1016/j.apgeog.2008.12.005
[19]	J. Xiao, Y. Shen, J. Ge, R. Tateishi, C. Tang, Y. Liang and Z. Huang, “Evaluating Urban Expansion and Land Use Change in Shijiazhaung, China by Using GIS and Remote Sensing,” Landscape and Urban Planning, Vol. 75, 2006, pp. 69-80. doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2004.12.005
[20]	X. Yang and C. P. Lo, “Using a Time Series of Satellite Imagery to Detect Land Use and Cover Changes in the Atlanta, Georgia,” International Journal of Remote Sensing, Vol. 23, No. 9, 2002, pp. 1775-1798. doi:10.1080/01431160110075802
[21]	F. Yuan, “Land-Cover Change and Environmental Impact Analysis in the Greater Mankato area of Minnesota Using Remote Sensing and GIS Modeling,” International Journal of Remote Sensing, Vol. 29, No. 4, 2008, pp. 1169- 1184. doi:10.1080/01431160701294703
[22]	S. Kato and Y. Yamaguchi, “Analysis of Urban Heat- Island Effect Using ASTER and ETM + Data: Separation of Anthropogenic Heat Discharge and Natural Heat Radiation from Sensible Heat Flux,” Remote Sensing of Environment, Vol. 99, No. 1-2, 2005, pp. 44-54.
[23]	M. L. Imhoff, P. Zhang, E. Robert Wolfe and L. Bounoua, “Remote Sensing of the Urban Heat Island Effect across Biomes in the Continental USA,” Remote Sensing of Environment, Vol. 114, 2010, pp. 504-513. doi:10.1016/j.rse.2009.10.008
[24]	Q. Weng, “A Remote Sensing-GIS Evaluation of Urban Expansion and Its Impact on Surface Temperature in the Zhujiang Delta, China,” International Journal of Remote Sensing, Vol. 22, No. 10, 2001, 1999-2014.
[25]	R. Verma, K. Sangeeta Kumari and R. K.Tiwary, “Application of Remote Sensing and GIS Technique for Efficient Urban Planning in India,” Geomatrix Conference Proceedings, IIT Bombay, 2009. http://www.csre.iitb.ac.in/~csre/conf/wp-content/uploads/fullpapers/OS4/OS4_13.pdf
[26]	P. Roudgarmi, M. Monavari, J. Feghhi, J. Nouri and N. Khorasani, “Environmental Impact Prediction Using Remote Sensing Images,” Journal of Zhejiang University Science A, Vol. 9, No. 3, 2008, pp. 381-390. doi:10.1631/jzus.A072222
[27]	P. V. Bolstad and T. D. Lillesand, “Rapid Maximum Likelihood Classification,” Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing, Vol. 57, 1991, pp. 67-74.
[28]	G. H. Rosenfield and K. Fitzpatirck-Lins, “A Coefficient of Agreement as a Measure of Thematic Classification Accuracy,” Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing, Vol. 52, No. 2, 1986, pp. 223-227.
[29]	Delhi Development Authority, “The Master Plan for Delhi—1962, 2001 & 2021,” http://dda.org.in/planning/mpd-1962.htm http://dda.org.in/planning/mpd-2001.htm http://dda.org.in/planning/mpd-2021.htm
[30]	Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations, “World Urbanization Prospects: The 2009 Revision,” 2010. http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/wall-chart_1.htm