Monitoring the urban expansion of Sparta and Nafplio cities using remote sensing and GIS techniques

Abstract

During the last four decades, Greece has suffered from an enormous internal immigration. The majority of small villages were abandoned and the population has been gathered into urban areas, usually into the prefectural capital cities. Because of the significant increase of population, the urban expansion was excessive and in some cases catastrophic. A lot of changes have been occurred to the landforms, drainage networks and landuse. The Institute of geology and Mineral Exploration of Greece (I.G.M.E.), in the frame of CSF 2000 - 2006 (Community Support Framework 2000-2006), has been implementing the pilot project titled "Collection, Codification and Documentation of geothematic information for urban and suburban areas in Greece - pilot applications". Four different cities (Drama - North Greece, Nafplio & Sparta -Peloponnesus and Thrakomakedones - Attica) were selected as pilot areas.For these cities we have tried to detect and map the urban extent and expansion and estimate their growth rate, using GIS and remote sensing techniques. Multitemporal and multiresolution satellite data covering the period 1975-2007 and topographic maps at a scale of 1:5.000 were used for the urban growth mapping and observation.The qualitative and quantitative results for the cities of Nafplio & Sparta are presented in this study.