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GIS model to assess Chennai city’s environmental performance, using green-cover as the parameters.
A.Meenatchi sundaram
Selection grade lecturer
Manipla Institute of Technology,
Email: meenarun_2000@yahoo.com
Chennai city is the capital of Tamil Nadu, located in the Southeastern India. The average population growth of the city is 25% per decade that recurrently reduces the green-covered area. Exceptionally, during the post economic liberalization period, i.e. between the years 1997-2001, the city lost up to 99% of its green covered areas at some parts. Subsequently, the Chennai city started to experience wide range of environmental issues, like urban heat island, pollution and ground water depletion, etc. Though other factors are also reason for that, the receding green-covers mainly lowers the urban system's self rejuvenation capacity. In other words, the diminishing green-covers simplified many aspects of the natural process, thus ultimately affected the Chennai city's environmental performance. To appraise this sensitive association between the green-cover and city's environmental performance, a GIS model has been developed by adapting the Chennai city as the case study area. The model is evolved, using the three sets of the green-cover services, namely the air quality amelioration, the hydrological process regulation and the micro-climatic amelioration. Through this model, the correlation between the Chennai city's green-cover change and its environmental performance change is appraised. The output confirms the positive relationship between per capita green cover modification and the Chennai city's environmental performance change. The result also shows that the Chennai city's environmental performance is reduced drastically across the city between the years 1997- 2001, at some parts to the degree of 38% is reduced.
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