9. Case Study 1: Monitoring and Modelling of Urban Land Use Changes

Land use-land cover (LULC) changes are an important indicator for urban planning and management. Understanding the patterns of LULC change aids in the effective management of all available resources, particularly in regions where there is little or no reported data on the status of LULC. In this study, remotely sensed satellite imagery from Landsat 5 and Landsat 8 was obtained for two years, 2001 and 2020, respectively. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) were used to quantify past and present LULC changes in Mirzapur District of Uttar Pradesh. To achieve these goals, the maximum likelihood classifier (MCL) was used to generate LULC maps with six class categories (water body, built-up land, forest land, crop land, barren land and fallow land). The classified maps for 2001 and 2020 were used to perform a two-decade change analysis over the region. The change analysis revealed that over the last two decades, built-up areas increased by 23.55% between 2001 and 2020. Barren and fallow land decreased by 8.37 and 5.77%, respectively, during this time period. The area under waterbodies has also decreased by 1.82%. These findings provide invaluable baseline information with which the government and other concerned stakeholders, urban planners and decision-makers can better manage available resources and monitor environmental changes in order to ensure the sustainable living in the region.