Monitoring land use change and its drivers in Delhi, India using multi-temporal satellite data

Urbanization is the primary driver of Land Use/ Land Cover (LULC) changes throughout the world. It is arguably the most dramatic and prevalent form of irreversible land transformation. In a fast growing city like Delhi, land use changes are tremendous. Therefore, it is imperative to analyze the driving forces of such change. Along with Delhi, the South West District of Delhi has been chosen for a comparative study of LULC change from 1977 to 2014. Landsat and Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellite scenes were used to perform both supervised and unsupervised classification and an overall accuracy of over 90 % was achieved for all the years. In Delhi, net percent change from 1977 to 2014 was found to be +30.61 % for built-up area, -22.75 % for cultivated area, -5.31 % for dense forest, -2.76 % for wasteland and +2.41 % for road/rail network. No major net percent change was seen in open forest, scrubs/degraded forest, plantations and river/ waterbody. The LULC results provide evidence of relationship between built-up area, agricultural land and wasteland over the past four decades. The effect of economic reforms of 1991 has manifested itself as a change in LULC. Overall it illustrates a characteristic picture of LULC change and its dynamics.