Nature Environment and Pollution Technology

S. Muthu Meenakshi ¹, A. Sundara ¹

Affiliations
1 School of Energy, Environment and Natural Resources, Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai-625 021, Tamil Nadu, IN

Abstract

Urban growth is most rapid in the developing world, where cities gain an average of five million residents every month in a year. The rapid urbanization and other infrastructure development in cities made workers to substitute a greater distance between their residencies and the cities so it encroached industries and businesses to locate or relocate in suburban fringe areas which contain all facilities such as in metropolitan areas. The urban service area-Madurai, a metropolitan area, is currently experiencing linear to horizontal expansion and a variety of development pressures due to the unabated scattered population growth and socio-economic status, which portrays the conversion of agriculture lands, wet lands and number of water bodies into housing and industrial sites in a haphazard manner at the outskirts of the city known as Madurai suburban fringe area. This study evaluates the effectiveness of high-resolution satellite data and computer aided GIS techniques in assessing the land use change dynamics within the study area, Madurai city and its suburban fringe areas, from 2001 to 2008. Satellite images were used for the year 2001 and 2008 at scale 1:50000.

Keywords

Land Use/Land Cover, Changes Remote Sensing, GIS, Urbanization And Sub Urban, Fringe Area.

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S. Kaliraj ¹, S. Muthu Meenakshi ², V. K. Malar ³

Affiliations
1 Centre for Geo Technology, Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli-627 012, T. N., IN
2 School of Energy, Environment and Natural Resources, Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai-625 021, T. N., IN
3 Indian Institute of Surveying and Mapping (IIS&M), Survey of India, Uppal, Hyderabad-500 039, A. P., IN

Abstract

The continuous observations on forest cover through the spaceborne technology known as remote sensing provide relative accuracy for temporal variation, changes and spatial distribution of forest biodiversity. The present study describes the temporal changes in forest cover and their spatial distribution in Devanampatti Reserved Forest in Tiruvannamalai District of Tamilnadu using change detection matrices technique by integrating remote sensing and GIS. Remote sensing technology provides satellite imagery with synaptic coverage on large area and high spatial resolution to identify individual species in biodiversity and delineating various forest types at national, regional and local level, and that facilitates to manage and conserve the forest biodiversity worldwide. The present study carried out using Landsat TM and ETM+ imageries acquired in 1977, 1991 and 2006 during the same seasonal period. The present study has brought the view of temporal variation of forest cover and its distribution in various periods. This also revealed the changes and spatial distribution of particular forest types into what types of spatial feature from the past period to present. The study showed rapid changes of forest cover between the two decades; the result of change detection analysis reveals that the deciduous forest cover spatially distributed to about 57.35 km² in 1977 and it tremendously decreased to 29.60 km² in 1991 and 23.56 km² in 2006. The decreasing rate per year between 1977 and 2006 was estimated at 0.65 %. The area of mixed forest cover was estimated to be about 35.30 km² in 1977, which decreased to 41.75 km² in 1991 and 18.96 km² in 2006 with the decreasing rate of 0.018% per year. Unfortunately, the rich forest biodiversity degraded into sandy gravel or eroded landform, and range of area cover was about 18.93 km² in 1977 and 24.30 km² in 2006 and rocky exposure increased in its area from 44.67 km² in 1977 to 77.79 km² in 2006. The changing rate of these landforms increased per year to about 0.11 % and 0.63 % respectively.

Keywords

Devanampatti Reserve Forest, Remote Sensing, GIS, Forest Cover Changes, Change Detection Matrix, Image Classification.

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