INTRODUCTION

Human induced land use and land cover (LULC) changes have been the major drivers for the changes in local and global environments. Land cover dynamics involving conversion of natural resources (vegetation, water bodies, green spaces) into urban space have affected various natural and ecological process. Urbanisation is a dynamic complex phenomenon involving large scale changes in the land uses at local levels.  Analyses of changes in land uses in urban environments provide a historical perspective of land use and give an opportunity to assess the spatial patterns, correlation, trends, rate and impacts of the change, which would help in better regional planning and good governance of the region [1]. Urban growth is a spatial and demographic process, involving concentrated human activities in the region, which has high economic potential [2,3,4].  Urban growth pattern, have a direct influence on the region’s development process and often it extends its influence on the neighborhood [1], leading to dispersed growth, which is often referred as urban sprawl or peri-urban growth. Urban sprawl refers to a small clusters of medium to low-density urban growth in the outskirtswithout proper basic amenities [1,5]. This form of peri urban low density growth apart from lacking basic amenities also have a number of social, economic and environmental disadvantages [4]. Mapping the urban sprawl dynamics helps not only to identify the environmental degradation but also to visualize the future patterns of sprawling growth. Techniques have evolved for identifying and quantifying the urban sprawl [6,7,4]. Apt way to capture this process is to consider the spatial and temporal changes taking place in the regions covered with impervious surfaces [8].

A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the landscape structure is essential to analyse of the patterns of landuse changes. Thematic land-use and land-cover maps generated allow us to quantify characteristics of landscape heterogeneity [9] and landscape fragmentation [10]. Spatio-temporal data (Remote Sensing (RS) data acquired through space borne sensors) with Geographic Information System (GIS) are helpful in data acquisition and analysis of LULC changes and for qualitative and quantitative results to understand the changes [11]. Temporal RS data has been used to analyze and understand the changes and impacts of human activities on the natural ecosystem [12]. Urban growth is captured based on spatial configuration and its dynamics [13]. Spatial metrics are useful for describing the landscape structure [14,1] and for a wide range of applications, including theassessments of land-use change required for landscape planning and management [15], detection of changes in vegetation patterns [16], changes in landscape structure [17], for assessing the impacts of urbanization on the landscape [1,2,4,18]. Common spatial metrics have been computed for describing the structural characteristics and growth patterns of the built-up area. This review illustrates that significant research contributions ranging from gradient analyses to geospatial tool applications have been made to understand the urban growth pattern, quantification of complex patterns or processes of urban growth [19]. The present scenario in India with attribute to structure composition and rate of growth of most Indian metropolitan cities or tier 1 cities have an aggregated urban cores, huge population and have been expanding into the rural fringe areas, and planners have failed in providing the basic necessities and infrastructure [4]. Thus there has been a need of providing an alternative region for development which has been in the form of Tier II cities, which have huge space for infrastructural development capabilities with good facilities for providing basic amenities. In order to be able to provide basic amenities and infrastructure for the complex and dynamic urbanenvironment there is an obvious need for planners and city developers to monitor and visualize the growth pattern and changing land use along the urban area and the peri urban areaof the tier two cities This communication analyses the growth pattern of developing cities in Karnataka State, India. These regions have large neighborhood of various classes with diverse landscape patterns. The objectives of the study are (a) to understand the land cover and land use dynamics using temporal remote sensing data, (b) quantify urban growth, (c) to understand the urban growth patterns in different locations using gradients and (d) to assess the pattern of growth over past two decades using spatial metrics over gradient.