Geospatial Analysis of Urban Sprawl Using Landsat Data in Kannur, Kerala

The urban population is rising at an uncontrollable pace and it has a vital role in causing unplanned development in the fringes of the cities. This uncontrolled growth called urban sprawl causes many environmental as well as social impacts. The first step to keep the sprawl at check is to detect, map and monitor. Geospatial practices have been found to be faster and easier in these processes than the conventional methods. Kannur is an urban cluster considered as million plus UA/city, situated in the state of Kerala. This paper categorized the urban evolution using hybrid geospatial techniques over the years in the emerging metropolitan city of Kannur which is one of the oldest municipalities in India. The study has been done over three decades from 2002 to 2020 and the geographical variation analyzed to understand the urban sprawl. Land use and land cover maps of 2002, 2010 and 2020 are prepared using Landsat data and are classified into five broad categories which are urban region, water body, vegetation, agricultural land and barren land. The area covered by each class in each period is compared by calculating the area of each class. Accuracy assessment is carried out for each LULC maps. Built-up area map is prepared using NDBI and the area calculated gives an idea about how much the built-up feature has encroached on the other land features over the period nearly two decades. The study finally confirms the decline in agricultural land and vegetation on a large extent and the barren land and water body is the least affected by urbanization.