ABSTRACT

Understanding landscape dynamics aids in the planning and management of natural resources in order to improve economic, social & ecological health of the region. This involves persistent knowledge of landscape at temporal scale. Urbanisation involves large scale changes in the land cover in response to the economic & social goals. This influences the policy towards environmental conditions & ecological conservation goals of the region. Unplanned urbanisation witnessed in most growing cities in India has led to unsustainable development evident from lack of appropriate infrastructure & basic amenities. In this backdrop, spatial metrics aid in accurate understanding of economic-environmental effects from urbanization. Land use land cover (LULC) analysis with spatial metrics help in exploring the landscape dynamics towards better planning of the region.

Land use of the cities involves complex patterns of spatial heterogeneity. Expansions in response to urbanizing cities results in new low density suburbs with isolated or semi-detached housing. The present work addresses the spatio-temporal characteristics of the urban expansion in Bangalore metropolitan area from 1973 to 2010 captured through the multi-resolution temporal remote sensing data with landscape metrics. In order to account isolated or semidetached housing region 10 km buffer is considered from the city administrative boundary. The region has been divided into 13 circular gradients of 8 zones (as the dynamics of change in each direction are different (in response to the agents)). Land use analysis with computation of spatial metrics has been carried out for each region. Temporal LU analysis for the period 1973 to 2010 shows the decline in the vegetation cover, water bodies with the rapid increase in the urban area. The landscape metrics depicts the city is more Clumped at center and fragmented towards the periphery. The analysis at local scales would stimulate the regional decision making which help in monitoring of the urban landscapes to support sustainable development.

Key words: Landscape, Metrics, Urbanisation, GRASS, Remote sensing, Sprawl.