TITLE:
Evaluating Urban Landscape Dynamics over Srinagar City and Its Environs
AUTHORS:
Arshad Amin, Shahab Fazal
KEYWORDS:
Urbanization, Landscape Dynamics, Urban Footprint, Urbanized Area, New Development
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geographic Information System,
Vol.7 No.2,
April
22,
2015
ABSTRACT: Rapid, unplanned and
uncontrolled urbanization causes disorganized growth. The patterns of urban
development are changing natural landscapes and their dynamics. This has
necessitated understanding of spatial patterns of urbanization and prompted
research. Urbanization being a dynamic phenomenon has been facing ambiguities
regarding methods to study its dynamism. It has made operational, a
wide-variety of spatial metrics methods utilizing multiple dates of remotely
sensed data. The present work carries out the quantitative and qualitative
analysis of urban growth of Srinagar by using Urban Landscape Analysis Tool
(ULAT). Urbanized Area (UA), Urban Footprint (UF) and New Development (ND) maps
are generated to quantify the degree of urbanization based on spatial density
of built-up area. Comparative analysis of these maps in relation to the
built-up spread pattern indicates that mostly the environs of the Srinagar city
which includes mostly agricultural, vacant and marshy areas prominently in
northern, western and southern areas contribute to the development of the city.