INTRODUCTION

Land use Land cover (LULC) dynamics is a major concern as the abrupt changes in these dynamics affects the ecology, geology, climate, regional hydrology, and livelihood of the region. LULC dynamics are specific to a region and vary from region to region (Ramachandra et al., 2012). Land Cover refers to the observed physical cover on the earth’s surface. Land cover can be confined to describe Vegetation and Manmade features (Lillisand and keifer, 2005) and designates the visible evidence of land use to include both vegetation and non-vegetation. Land use refers to use of the land surface through modifications by humans and natural phenomena (Lillisand and keifer, 2002). The Land use can be classified into various classes such as Water Bodies, Built up’s, Forests, Different Vegetation Classes, Irrigation lands, Open Lands, Sand, Soil, etc. Land use modification alter the structure of the landscape and hence the functional ability of the landscape (Ramachandra, et al., 2012). The modification includes conversion of forest lands, scrublands to agricultural fields, cultivation lands to built up, construction of storage structures for water bodies leading to submergence of Land features that may vary from small scale to large scale.

To understand the land use and land cover of the region it is necessary for data to have spatial reference, hence remote sensing plays an important role as a tool to understand such dynamics. Remote Sensing and GIS platforms are used to acquire and understand the land use, land cover and the urban sprawl dynamics for the study area (Raichur city) between 1989 and 2009. Remote sensing refers to the acquisition of information about an area, object by analyzing the information acquired by the device that is not in contact with the object. Remote Sensing has the advantages of repetitive data acquisition, synoptic view, long-term historical archives, high spatial-resolution, and stable quality for example. (Lillisand and kiefer, 2002). Remote Sensing facilitates in detection and characterization of features based on the spectral reflectance behavior of different features, to monitor LULC dynamics over large areas, and also the areas that is hazardous and inaccessible to reach. Satellite remote sensing technology has the ability to provide consistent measurements of landscape condition, allowing detection of abrupt or slow trend in changes over time. Long-term change detection results can provide insight into the stressors and drivers of change, potentially allowing for management strategies targeted toward cause rather than simply the symptoms of the cause (Kennedy et al., 2009).

Analyzing the spatio-temporal characteristics of land cover and land use changes are essential for understanding and assessing ecological consequence of urbanization. Urbanization is a universal phenomenon taking place all over the world, but most commonly in cities/towns of developing nations. In countries like India, urbanization is due to the increase in population, industrialization leading to increase in employment opportunities which demands for workmanship, due to which people from various location regional or global are employed, higher the employment opportunities increases the demand for settlements and hence leading to urban sprawl. Sprawl is one such phenomenon that drives the change in land use patterns. Sprawl normally takes place in radial direction around the city centre or in linear direction along the highways, ring roads. The built-up is generally considered as the parameter for quantifying urban sprawl. The study on urban sprawl is attempted in the developed countries and recently in developing countries such as China (Yeh and Li, 2001) and India (Ramachandra et al., 2012, Sudhira et al., 2003, Sudhira et al., 2004). In India alone currently 25.73% of the population (Census of India, 2001) lives in the urban centers while it is projected that in the next fifteen years about 33% would be living in the urban centers (Sudhira et al 2004). In order to understand the regions dynamics quantification of urbanisation and sprawl is necessary. Shannon’s entropy is a good and established measure of  the degree of spatial concentration or dispersion of a geographical variable among ‘n’ zones (Yeh and Li, 2001; Sudhira et al., 2003; Sudhira et al 2004;Ramachandra et al., 2012) and indicates distribution is spread across the region.  Objective of the study is to analyze the land use Land cover dynamics of the region, analysis of the expanding urban region and the underlying effects of urbanisation such as urban sprawl through indicators such as Shannon’s entropy.