Urban Sprawl Mapping through Geo-Informatics and Impact on Land use and Landcover of Kakinada Municipal Corporation in Andhra Pradesh, India

Abstract

Urban infrastructure and urban sprawl required the idea of preparing a proper management plan to avoid the unwanted environmental and economic impacts that come with it. The main objective of the research is to map the urban sprawl using Geospatial technology and t its impact on land use and land cover. The increase in the rate of population over the last two decades is equally responsible for the urban expansion and subsequent infrastructure development. The results of the integrated geospatial study shows that the urban expansion of Kakinada Municipal Corporation was largely caused by the increase in built-up area from 29.67% in 1995, 44.86% in 2011 to 51.34% in 2017 to 62.84% in 2019 out of Kakinada’s township area of 189552.6 ha mainly due to natural increase of the population and rural ward migration. Vegetation area was 50.68% in 1995 and has declined to 37.82% in 2011. However, the percentage of vegetation experienced a hike and covered 40.23% in 2017 and then went downhill with a land cover percentage of 34.04% of the total township by the year 2019. Over the last two decades the water-body and the dry land were largely converted into built-up areas. The decline of 49151 ha of water-body due mainly because of the urban expansion and the dry-land lost nearly 27200.79 ha of its land cover to the built-up areas. Therefore, controlling and monitoring of urban expansion using GIS and remote sensing technologies are vital solutions to assess the impact of urban expansion of land use and land cover.