An Assessment of Land Use Land Cover Change and Urban Growth of Nashik City Using Geospatial Techniques

Abstract

The major focus of this study is analysis of the relationship between land use and land cover (LULC) dynamics, built-up land expansion patterns, and underlying driving forces of change from 1981 to 2020. Many of the world’s largest cities are dealing with the dilemma of the urban growth, but in recent years this situation is also seen in sub centres. The study of the LULC is useful to analyse the trend of an urban area and growth. The Spatio-temporal assessment of the urban growth in Nashik Municipal Corporation (NMC) administrative wards has been analysed using space-borne Remote Sensing (RS) data (series of Landsat Imagery (MSS/TM/ETM + /OLI) for the year of 1981, 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2020 with photogrammetry tools, Geographical Information System (GIS), Shannon’s entropy model and accuracy assessment. The overall scenario of LULC in the NMC reveals that the open land, fallow land, vegetation has been decreasing and urban built up is increasing at the expanse of these areas. The urban built-up area has increased from 2 (1981) to 53 (2020) percent of geographical area of NMC. The Shannon’s entropy model was applied to the six municipal wards and the value of the Shannon’s entropy confirms randomly growing urban built-up in the NMC. The finding of this study will help to researchers, planner and policy makers for better assessment of the urban growth and trend of transformation of land uses and land cover.