A city growth and land-use/land-cover change: a case study of Bhopal, India

Nowadays, the rate of urban expansion is quite alarming in developing countries, especially in India. This hasty rate of urban expansion has significantly transformed the natural landscape and creates negative impact on environment. For planned development, we need to understand the urbanization process clearly, and also need to understand the changes in land use/land cover (LULC). Currently, remote-sensing data and GIS technique have been used extensively to understand the urbanization processes and its impact on land use. The aim of the current study is to analyze the expansion of Bhopal city and its impact on land use, using remotely sensed data along with several statistical techniques such as Shannon’s entropy and Chi square statistic. The analysis shows that the city has experienced a rapid rate of horizontal expansion; city area increased from 15.8 km2 in 1991 to 184.5 km2 in 2016 at an average change of 7 km2 year−1 with spatial disparity. LULC classes of the city area were altered by this expansion process. Expansions of built-up area mainly come from the agricultural and forest land. These are the two primary classes which were affected badly by this expansion process. The present study suggests to make cities more compact, and the need to take proper land and housing policy by the local governing authority and policy makers.