Urban Expansion and its impact on Land Use Land Cover Change-A study of Amritsar, Punjab

Abstract

. Amritsar serves as a major commercial, cultural, and transportation hub with Golden Temple & Raja Sansi international airport. It lies about 25 km east of the border with Pakistan and gateway for travelers coming to India on the overland route from central Asia. Monitoring land use/land cover changes and its response to urban growth is very important to understand the urban dynamics for sustainable urban planning. On the other hand, agriculture and settlements recorded a sharp increase in recent decades. The growth of agricultural area and human settlements are putting pressure on the natural resources and depleting the human environment relationship in the floodplain. The paper discusses about Urban Expansion and Land Use Land Cover in Amritsar, northern Punjab, India.This study utilized multi-temporal satellite data from Landsat for the classification of land use and land cover. The results revealed that the total population in the city has increased many folds. It contributes to the enlargement of the city that resulted in conversion of farming land use dominant landscape into urban land use dominant landscape during the last three decades. The analysis would be helpful for sustainable urban land use planning decisions for the metropolis.