INTEGRATED APPROACH TO MAP LANDUSE LANDCOVER CHANGES IN AN URBAN (GREEN) CITY IN NORTHERN INDIA- A CASE STUDY OF CHANDIGARH

摘要

Chandigarh a green, urban city built in 1966, located at 340 m above MSL, situated in the shadow of the geologically unstable Shivalik hills. The urban boundaries are defined by two rivulets- the Patiala-ki-Rao on the north-west and the Sukhna choe on the south-east. Administrators & planners of this urban city require information on land use / land cover on a single platform on large scale, for monitoring and managing resources and for effective planning. Further, to monitor growth and development activities of its urban environment and to record spatio-temporal changes a digital map having possibility to update dynamic changes has become a necessity. The urbanization in Chandigarh has induced rapid drastic changes in the land use and land cover in the past two decades leading to many changes in the infrastructure and environment. To overcome conventional ground based techniques large scale aerial photographs (1:10,000) with limited ground truth verification were used for preparing Land use / land cover map. A mosaic of 120 aerial photographs was subjected to visual photo interpretation techniques to map different land use and land cover classes covering an area 114 sq km. Interpreted map was digitized & brought under G.I.S (Integrated Land and Water Information System - ILWIS- Netherland) platform. Analytical tools of GIS software were used for analyzing different categories of land use and land cover. Study brought out built up land as the main land cover. Plantation, forest, grassland and crops together constitute and provide green status to the city. Discrepancies in map prepared from 1998 aerial photographs and present trend of the land cover and land use have been observed. It is recommended that an integrated approach needs to be adopted for monitoring spatial and temporal changes using GIS and satellite data. To retain its urban green status, development and trends of land use and land cover, a digital map is necessary to be generated every year using high resolution satellite images to register changes taking place in land use / Land cover. Such a yearly satellite derived digital map will prove to be of immense use to administrators and planners for developmental activities & effective planning.