Introduction

Large scale land-use land-cover (LULC) dynamics leading to deforestation is one of the drivers of global climate changes and alteration of biogeochemical cycles. This has given momentum to investigate the causes and consequences of LULC by mapping and modelling landscape patterns and dynamics and evaluating these in the context of human-environment interactions in the rapidly urbanizing landscapes. Human induced environmental changes and consequences are not uniformly distributed over the earth. However their impacts threaten the sustenance of human-environmental relationships. Land cover refers to physical cover and biophysical state of the earth’s surface and immediate subsurface and is confined to describe vegetation and manmade features (1,2,3,4,5). Thus land cover reflects the visible evidence of land cover of vegetation and non-vegetation. Land use refers to use of the land surface through modifications by humans and natural phenomena (1,2,3,4,5,6).  Land use is characterized by the arrangements, activities and inputs people undertake in a certain land cover type to produce, change or maintain it [5].  Alteration the structure of the landscape through large scale LULC has influenced the functioning of landscape, which include nutrient, regional water and bio-geo chemical cycles (3,7). 

Post-independence period, particularly during the globalization era in 1990’s, the government facilitated the interactions of global industries with in-house industries. Large scale industrialization paved way for major land use land cover changes, caused by migration of people from different parts of the country, also from other parts of the globe and country for the employment opportunities. These led to intense urbanisation of major metropolitan cities with spurt in human population due to migration and also sprawl in peri-urban pockets (1,8,9,10,11,12) Unplanned urbanisation are characterized by the loss of diversity, with changes in the coherence and identity of the existing landscapes. The drastic landscape changes are a threat or a negative evolution, as it affects the sustenance of natural resources. Urbanisation process leads to conversion of ecological land use (such as vegetation. Open area, cultivable lands, water) in to impervious layers on the earth surface. Increasing unplanned urbanisation is an important cause for depletion of resources, species extinction, hydro-geological alterations, loss of crop lands (3,13).  Unplanned urbanisation has various underlying effects such as dispersed growth or sprawl.

Urban Sprawl refers to an uncontrolled, scattered urban growth as a consequence of socio economic infrastructural development leading to increase in traffic, deficit of resources by depletion of the locally available resources while creating demand for more resources (3,10,14,15) Often exceeding the carrying capacity of the land. The dispersed growth or sprawl occurs basically in the periphery and the outskirts and these regions are devoid of any basic amenities or infrastructure. Sprawl can be in the radial direction encircling the city center or in linear direction along the highways, ring roads, etc. The dispersed growth of urban pockets has been quantified through mapping of impervious surface in and around the city in the developed countries and in developing countries such as China (13,16) and India (1,14,17,18).  As per the population census, 25.73% [19] lives in the urban centers in India and it is projected that during the next decade about 33% would be living in the urban center (1,3) The extent or level of urbanisation and consequent sprawl has driven the changes in land use land cover patterns. LULC dynamics have altered the spatial landscape patterns [10] and these changes in the landscape (urban) pattern indicates the socio economic conditions and environmental impacts. The underlying phenomena of urban sprawl has been explained through the landscape index - Shannon entropy, a measure of urban growth (10,20). It measures the degree of spatial concentration or dispersion of a geographical variable among n zones (3,14,16). Larger value of entropy highlights the occurrence of dispersed growth or urban sprawl (1,3).

Multi resolution spatio temporal data acquired since 1970’s through space borne sensors helps in quantifying LULC dynamics through the temporal analysis of landscape patterns (1,18,21). Evaluation of landscape dynamics qualitatively and quantitatively aids in understanding the changes and also help to determine the effect of anthropogenic activities (1,4,10,22).The application of landscape metrics to spatio-temporal data helps in analysing the urban foot print. Landscape metrics aid in quantifying the spatial pattern of a particular landscape changes within the geographical area (1,3,14,22,23). These metrics enables to quantify the landscape with respect to spatial dimension, alignment, pattern at a specific scale and resolution [6].  Metrics applied with the land use data help in evaluating the landscape heterogeneity and also in relating to urban growth pattern (1,23). The spatial metrics have been used to quantify the urban form, describe the trend and growth of the land use patterns and to model the patterns of future urbanisation (3,22,23). Gradient based spatial metrics analysis helps to visualize and understand the development in different directions and gradients with respect to the location as peaks and valleys along the direction (6,10,24).    

The current focus of LULC analysis is to analyse the landscape dynamics of Belgaum City with 5 km buffer using Shannon’s entropy and exploring insights to landscape patterns through spatial metrics applied to the temporal land use data.