3. Study area and Data

Greater Bangalore is the principal administrative, cultural, commercial, industrial, and knowledge capital of the state of Karnataka with an area of 741 square kilometers and lies between the latitudes 12°39’00’’ to 131°3’00’’N and longitude 77°22’00’’ to 77°52’00’’E (figure 3). Bangalore has grown spatially more than ten times (741 sq. km) since 1949 (69 sq. km.) and is the fifth largest metropolis in India currently with a population of about 7 million (figure 4).
 

Figure 3 : Study area – Greater Bangalore, India.

The mean annual total rainfall is about 880 mm with about 60 rainy days a year over the last ten years. The summer temperature ranges from 18° C – 38° C, while the winter temperature ranges from 12° C – 25° C. Thus, Bangalore enjoys a salubrious climate all round the year. Bangalore is located at an altitude of 920 m above mean sea level.

Figure 4 : Population growth and population density.

Survey of India (SOI) toposheets of 1:50000 and 1:250000 scales were used to generate base layers of the city boundary and water bodies. Field data were collected with a handheld GPS. RS data (spatial and spectral resolutions are listed in table 2) used for the study are:

• Landsat MSS of 1973 [downloaded from http://glcf.umiacs.umd.edu/data/]
• Landsat TM of 1992 [downloaded from http://glcf.umiacs.umd.edu/data/]
• Landsat ETM+ of 2000 [downloaded from http://glcf.umiacs.umd.edu/data/]
• IRS (Indian Remote Sensing) LISS (Linear Imaging Self Scanner)-III of 1999 and 2006
• MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) Surface Reflectance 7 bands product [downloaded from http://edcdaac.usgs.gov/main.asp] of 2006 and 2007
• Google Earth data (http://earth.google.com) served in pre and post classification process and validation of the results.

Table 2 : Spatial and spectral details of the RS data