Spatio-temporal study of the distribution of land use and land cover change pattern in Chandigarh, India using remote sensing and GIS techniques

Abstract

Chandigarh is among the most important city of the northern India in terms of socioeconomic growth due to upcoming major projects, modernization of industrial activities and development of Information Technology sector so many people immigrated to the city and this resulted in greater load on the city population, thus, was selected for this study. Landsat TM and ETM+ images were used to characterize the land cover type and land cover changes in Union Territory of Chandigarh. The analysis revealed that the urban development of the city has been very rapid during the last decade and more recently, vegetation has greatly declined. The results demonstrated that the pressure of increased commercialization has driven change in land use pattern over a period of time and has resulted in widespread environmental degradation.