Analysis of landscape dynamics in the Mumbai-Pune industrial corridor
Student name: Ms Brigit Maria Baby
Guide: Dr Nithiyanandam Yogeswaran
Year of completion: 2016
Host Organisation: Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Dr T V Ramachandra
Abstract: Landscapes are the mosaics of interacting heterogeneous landforms or ecosystems. The interactions
of landscape with biotic, abiotic templates, environmental and demographic responses alter the
patterns of landscape. A major driving force for the landscape dynamics is urbanization which many
a times leads to an unsustainable and imbalanced population growth resulting in urban and industrial
spatial expansion on the peripheries. These uncontrolled dispersed developments are often referred as
urban sprawl. Urbanization being an effect of Industrial developments brings in many benefits and
environmental degradation when joined together. The expansion of industries generally aligns with
transportation networks due to its direct correlation with the economic development and the coupling
of urbanization and industrialization facilitates trade and commerce, creating more employment
opportunities and finally leads to social and economic reforms. Thus industrial corridors are often
recognized due to their importance in the country’s economy and helps in stimulating industrialization
and planned urbanization. Maharashtra is one of the forefront states of India with reference to
economic development and industrial expansions. In this study, corresponding to the Mumbai-Pune
expressway industrial corridor, the land use transformations have been monitored using temporal
remote sensing data with the aid of GIS and image processing from 1997 to 2015. The landscape
pattern analysis of the region was done through spatial metrics and the likely land use for 2021 and
2027 were predicted. The results of Supervised Classification through Maximum Likelihood Classifier
reveals a 16% increase in the total urban growth and the adjacent areas of Mumbai and Pune shows
14.5% and 8.44% growth respectively in the urban sector indicating a sprawl along the expressway
during the study period. This sudden urban growth along with a 16.63% decline in overall vegetation
cover has increased the concerns on environment. The landscape pattern analysis through spatial
metrics revealed a similar result which shows a compact urban growth in the cities of Mumbai and
Pune leading to sprawl along the outskirts. Through the CA-Markov modeling it was found that by
2027 the urban growth will increase to 49.69% from 3.66% in 1997.Therefore and overall urban
expansion of 46% is expected to occur by 2027.Along with this expansion a decline of vegetation from
41.27% (1997) to 9.63% (2027) also raises concerns. Even though green technologies and practices
are supposed to be followed in these developments the study gives a profound understanding of land
use changes pointing towards the need for more condensed land use planning and policies highlighting
the need for a better sustainable development.
Keywords: Urbanization, Industrial corridor, Spatial metrics, CA-Markov, Sustainable development,
Remote sensing and GIS and PUNE-MUMBAI Industrial corridors
