INTRODUCTION

Unplanned urbanisation heralds the irreversible changes in the land cover threatening the sustence of natural resources and local; ecology. Indian cities underwent a rapid transition from the concentrated growth at city centre to very dispersed and fragmented model to accommodate the growth and demand of urban land that connects the major cities [42]. This has led to huge expansion around the urban area in an unplanned and uncontrolled manner [3]. Opening Indian markets during post 1990’s due to globalization process has directly or indirectly led to the severe fragmentation of land in major urban Metropolis [40]. Major metropolitan cities  experienced large scale land use changes with the compact or concentrated growth at city centre leading to a single land use urban class due to the availability of development conducive infrastructure  and natural resources ([1], [10], [42]). Most of the metropolitan urban fringe regions have experienced a rapid transitions from rural cultivable land to urban area due to exurban development during post 2000 ([13], [7], [2], [11], [43]). Dispersed industrial and commercial units with human settlements in peri urban area of most metropolitan regions have linked the respective sprawl pockets with dense city road networks. These metropolitan regions have reached the growth threshold evident from the inability to meet the basic needs of the growing population in urban fringes [40]. Hence the focus is towards tier II cities to meet the requirements of further growth. The tier II cities have the adequate resources to meet the requirements of basic amenities of the dependent urban population. There has been an increased interest in recent times by the federal government agencies in giving further impetus as ubiquitous and self-sustained cities, since this has necessitated to understand and visualize the spatial patterns of the growth in these regions in order to plan and implement sustainable management of natural resources such as land, water, etc.

Visualization and understanding of patterns of urbanisation is possible with the spatial data available at different time intervals.  Remote-sensed data acquired through space borne sensors since 70’s at regular intervals has aided mapping the compositions of cities and analyzing the changes over time ([18], [34], [33], [42]). The prominent characteristics of remotely sensed data, is availability in temporal mode and synoptic coverage of wide area, useful in analysing changes over the past four decades. This helps the planners and decision makers to visualise and understand the current patterns of urbanization processes ([5], [6]) apart from predicting the likely changes in future. The potential applications of remote sensing data in urban environmental research and policy has been well documented [35]. Further, the utility of multi resolution data for various environmental applications is reviewed by Sliuzas et al., 2010 [36]. Remote sensing data has been used to understand the spatio-temporal dynamics of urbanization, peri-urbanization, and urban morphology through land use land cover dynamics ([32], [8], [41], [25], [9], [29], [12], [15], [16], [17], [14], [42], [40]). This forms the basis for current analysis of urban growth through remote sensing data through the temporal dynamics of land cover and land uses.

Landscape metrics through Fragstat [26] are computed to detect and understand the patterns of variations in peri- urban or urban sprawl trends across the study region, along with multi-resolution remote sensing data.  Landscape metrics aid in quantifying the spatial patterns of land use patches in a geographic area [26]. It provides both a quantitative and qualitative data and information on urban forms ([42], [4], [30]). Changes in landscape pattern have been detected and described through spatial metrics which aided in quantifying and categorizing complex landscapes ([28],  [29], [31], [4], [19], [42]). Buffer region was considered in addition to the city’s administrative boundary to account for the current and likely peri-urban development.

Bellary  a rapidly urbanising Tier II  city of Karnataka, was considered for the current analysis and  the  objectives of the study are to (a)  quantify  urban  growth  dynamics considering the administrative boundary with 4 km buffer through Land cover and land use analyses, (b)  to  understand the pattern of urban growth through gradient approach,  and (c)  understand the dynamics of growth using spatial metrics. The qualitative and quantitative information support policy-making in urban planning and the sustainable management of natural resources.