ZONAL PERSPECTIVE ON SPATIO-TEMPORAL LAND USE CHANGE IN INDIA THROUGH METRICS

Abstract. India is a magnanimous country having large population centres with different settlement characteristics in various states and Union Territories (UTs), which can affect climate and development of country in longer duration. As such spatio-temporal analysis of urban dynamics over different constituent land use/land cover (LU/LC) is performed in this study using open source data and software programs only. The study derives a pattern of 4 Landscape Metrics (LSMs) by mapping urban growth through continuity, complexity, centrality and compactness of built-up land use using a publically available classified Decadal Land use data of India for years 1985, 1995 and 2005, over a period of 20 years in 7 zones of India. Spatially, UTs are showing lowest values in all LSMs which may be attributed to comparatively smaller sizes of districts in UTs. Central zone of India is showing highest values of Largest Patch Index (LPI) indicating larger built-up patches in zone, as larger population resides in the central states of India. East zone is having most complex shape of urbanisation with highest Landscape Shape Index (LSI) value. West Zone is predominantly showing greater centrality values through Mean Euclidean Nearest Neighbor Distance (ENN_MN), as larger part of it comprises of dessert. Temporally, built-up patches are larger and more complex in shape but less centralized in year 2005 with Aggregation Index (AI) remaining almost same over the years. All the results are indicating a dispersed urban growth in zones of India with similar surroundings of past years.