Analyses of land use land cover (LULC) change and built-up expansion in the suburb of a metropolitan city: Spatio-temporal analysis of Delhi NCR using landsat datasets

During past four decades, in post economic reforms period, Delhi and its surrounding regions has attracted a large number of populations which led to the rapid transformation of its LULC pattern. Therefore, this study is aimed to analyze the LULC changes during 1990-2018 as well as the growth and pattern of built-up surfaces in relation to the population growth and migration in the suburbs of Delhi metropolitan city which is also known as the National Capital Region (NCR). The Landsat 5 (TM) and Landsat 8 (OLI/TIRS) data has been used for the LU/LC classification of Delhi NCR. The K means clustering technique was applied on the Landsat data for the LULC classification and then the change detection technique was used to quantify the LULC change. The result shows that the considerable changes in LULC have occurred with continuous increase in built-up area and open/fallow land and decrease in agriculture land and vegetation over the study time period. Built-up area increased by about 326 percent and open/fallow land by 44 percent while the agricultural land and vegetation cover have decreased by 12 percent and 34 percent of the total area of study respectively during the study period. Built-up area has mostly increased at the expense of agricultural land and vegetation cover while vegetation cover has been transformed into Built-up area, Ridge and Agriculture. The statistical analysis shows that the association between built-up expansion and the population and migrants varies from weak to high but the coefficient of determination was always positive.