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Abstract
Rapid growth in population coupled with expansion of urban fringe and encroachment in the prime land is a matter of great concern for the authorities associated with the urban planning. Satellite remote sensing offers varied advantages and has been widely accepted as a technique for urban mapping as well as monitoring of changes in land use/ land cover. The expansion of sub-urban territory in Allahabad city of Uttar Pradesh State is a matter of concern for Planning Departments. Keeping this in view, it is planned to develop a remote sensing based methodology for the preparation of land use/ land cover map using digital image processing techniques for Allahabad city and to monitor the changes in various classes. For this, multi-date, multi-sensor remote sensing data of year 2000 (IRS-1D LISS-III) and year 1994 (IRS-1B LISS-II) has been used. Various land-use classes delineated include built-up, agriculture, sand, water, scrub and open/ barren land. The classification has been performed using maximum likelihood classifier in an iterative manner. Changes in area under major land use/ land cover types have been determined through the comparison of their spatial extent in 1994 and 2000. It is observed that there has been an increase of nearly 8.0 km2 in built up area, coupled with decrease of about 20 km2 and 2.5 km2 in agriculture and scrub respectively in 6 years. The planning agencies in Allahabad city are expected to be benefited by the usage of remote sensing based methodology for achieving a balanced and sustainable development in the region.