Quantifying Spatio-Temporal Changes in Urban Area of Gulbarga City Using Remote Sensing and Spatial Metrics

Due to dramatic increase in urban population and allied urban problems it is essential to have urban planning and management at local level. For this urban planners and decision-makers need efficient tools to quantify, evaluate and compare the impact of alternative plans and designs so that more informed choices can be made. Gulbarga one of the developing city of Karnataka, it is important to know the extent growth rate of the urban area and to know the landscape fragmentation. The objective of the paper is to analyze the extent and rate of spatio-temporal urban growth of Gulbarga city using multi-temporal satellite images and to quantify the spatio-temporal pattern of urban growth and landscape fragmentation using spatial metrics. This identifies the patterns of sprawl and subsequently predicts the nature of future sprawl. This paper also attempts to describe some of the landscape metrics required for quantifying sprawl for Gulbarga region, so that it will help urban planner to plan city as a sustainable city.