Introduction

Urban growth occurs when local patches of settlement are forced to agglomerate. Annual rate of urban population growth in India is about 2.3% [1]. Urbanisation process is a significant economic and social phenomena that occurs at an unmatched rate and scale worldwide. Also it has been estimated that by the year 2025, 60% of the globe inhabitants will live in urbanized areas, 72% by 2050 [2-3] in contrast with 53% of inhabitants living in urban areas at present. Urban expansions are taking place rapidly with higher rate of people migrating from rural areas to fringes and successively to core cities. Other aspects such as educational and employment opportunities, health facilities, better livelihood or higher standard of living and ease of commuting acts as major thriving force contributing to urbanisation. Haphazard dispersed development at the fringes of a city which attenuates resources as a consequence of large land use change (conversion of green lands, water bodies, parks, etc.) has become a serious issue to be addressed by the rapidly developing cities [4]. Characterizing sprawl has a varying approach and therefore making it difficult for the people to understand and measure effectively [5]. Numerous literatures [6-11] have indicated major causes for urban growth as geography of a region, economic growth, population growth and migration, industrialization, transportation, way of living etc. As on date there is a need for studying urban sprawl both temporally and spatially. With sustainability as primary goal, government and other agencies should plan, manage and develop a proper approach for designing the requirements of population growth and urban expansion. This research article employs spatial metrics, density gradient along with classified data which helps in monitoring land use changes especially to examine urban land use type [12-14]. The metrics used in this study includes: number of patches, normalized landscape shape index and clumpiness index. Various efforts have been put to understand spatio-temporal dynamics of urban growth in India. Large area of fertile and productive agricultural land were lost as a result of fragmentation due to industrialization, quarrying of sand, soil, stone etc. [15-18]. These literatures have quite well estimated changes in land use over a period of time. Findings of this research helps planners and decision makers to visualize pockets of urban growth and thereby minimizing the impacts on surrounding environment.