Geographical analysis

Abstract

Rapid urbanization leads to dramatic change in urban landscape dynamics. The knowledge of land use and land cover is important for many planning and management activities and is consider an essential element for modeling and understanding the earth as a system. This paper illustrate the use of remote sensing and Geographical Information System techniques to monitor and measure the land use / land cover and urban growth of Solapur city, Maharashtra, India. IRS Satellite imagery and topographical map of Solapur city with 1:250,000 were compared for the present study over a period of 20 years. Supervised classification methodology has been employed by using Maximum Likelihood Techniques in ERDAS 9.1. Solapur city is located in semi arid region of which is climatically drought prone. The population of Solapur city as per 2011 census was 9, 51,558. It is most popular in manufacturing of textile product. Recently city is expanding because of education hub, emerging medical tourist destination The images of the study area were categorized in to four different classes, viz. water body & Marsh land, vegetation & Agricultural Area, built- up land and open space. The results indicate that the major land use in Solapur City is built -up area. During the period 1990 to 2011, the area under built- up land has increased by 15.63 % due to construction of new buildings on agricultural land, areas under vegetation and open space while Water body & Marsh land increased by 2.58%. As a result, the area under vegetation and open space decreased by 12.90% and 5.22% respectively The paper also highlights the nature, rate and location of change. The importance of digital change detection techniques is proper land use planning for sustainable and uniform growth of Solapur city.

Key Words: Land Use, Land Cover, GIS, Supervised Classification, Maximum Likelihood Techniques.