Monitoring urban Sprawl in Kanpur Metropolis, India, using Multidate Satellite data
S.K. Shukla & Ms Suchandra Ray
Remote Sensing Application Centre,
Uttar Pradesh, Sector-G,
Janakipuram, Kursi Road,
Lucknow-226007, India
Abstract
During the last two decades, rapid growth of certain large cities in India has led to extensive urban sprawl. For the management of these urban and periurban areas, accurate and updated Landuse maps are required. Urban Landuse/Lanedcover categories and their spatial extensions can easily be temporally monitored using multidate satellite data.
Kanpur metropolis, the industrial hub of the state of Uttar Pradesh with a population of 1.68 million and an urban area of approx. 300 sq km is the ninth largest city in the country,. In the decennium 1971-81, a population growth of about 3.2% per annum has been registered. The paper records the result of the study undertaken to monitor the spatial extension of urban growth of Kanpur city during fourteen years suing multidate satellite images.
The urban landuse/landcover status was derived from the Landsat MSS image of December 12,1975 and the information was transferred on Survey of India topographical maps to produce the threshold for comparison with subsequent date satellite images. The urban sprawl was thereafter monitored from Landsat TM image of March 2, 1986 and IRS-1A LISS-2 image of January 15, 1989 in order to assess the extent of increase in the growth of city. The comparison revealed that between 1975-89 the growth has taken place @ 6.4% per annum. Though the increase in urban sprawl has been noted to wardsa east and west of the metropolis also, but due to rapid expansion of industries in southern part of city, greater urban growth has taken place there.
Introduction
The inexorable growth of urban population in the coming decades presents a rare opportunity o assure an acceptable standard of living for the urban people (DdijKgraaf, 1987). Despite extensive efforts to improve the living conditions and basic amenities of the urban population, the number of badly sheltered lives in villages, still the urban growth has reached phenomenal proportions and continued to present almost insuramountable problems for the urban planners (Mishra, 1987).
The city of Kanpur is known to have undergone extremely fast areal expansion in recent years due to further industrialisation resulting in an unprecedented population growth @ 3.2% per annum during the last decade (Census of India, 1981) The rapid changes in the urban landuse and their expansion need to be monitored frequently for effective physical planning of the urban sprawl and to check uncontrolled growth of the city (Kalubnarme, et al., 1985). The present investigations were undertaken with the obejctive of mapping the urban landuse and monitoring the urban sprawl during the period of 1975-89 alongwith the dominant growth pattern of Kanpur metropolis using satellite remote sensing techniques.
Study Area
Kanpur metropolis, with a population of 1.68 million having an urban area of about 300 sq km is the ninth largest city in the country. It is the industrial hub of the state of Uttar Pradesh an is situated on the bank o river Ganga. It sprawls between latitude 26020’N and 80010’ to 80030’E (Fig.1)
