Journal
JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT
Volume 148, Issue -, Pages 53-66Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS LTD- ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2014.05.014
Keywords
Cultivated land; Land conversion; Land-use change; Agricultural census; MODIS; Night time lights (NTL)
Categories
Funding
- NASA LCLUC grant [NNX11AE88G]
- Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie
- Division Of Behavioral and Cognitive Sci [1229429] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- NASA [145108, NNX11AE88G] Funding Source: Federal RePORTER
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We examine the impacts of urbanization on agricultural land loss in India from 2001 to 2010. We combined a hierarchical classification approach with econometric time series analysis to reconstruct land-cover change histories using time series MODIS 250 m VI images composited at 16-day intervals and night time lights (NTL) data. We compared estimates of agricultural land loss using satellite data with agricultural census data. Our analysis highlights six key results. First, agricultural land loss is occurring around smaller cities more than around bigger cities. Second, from 2001 to 2010, each state lost less than 1% of its total geographical area due to agriculture to urban expansion. Third, the northeastern states experienced the least amount of agricultural land loss. Fourth, agricultural land loss is largely in states and districts which have a larger number of operational or approved SEZs. Fifth, urban conversion of agricultural land is concentrated in a few districts and states with high rates of economic growth. Sixth, agricultural land loss is predominantly in states with higher agricultural land suitability compared to other states. Although the total area of agricultural land lost to urban expansion has been relatively low, our results show that since 2006, the amount of agricultural land converted has been increasing steadily. Given that the preponderance of India's urban population growth has yet to occur, the results suggest an increase in the conversion of agricultural land going into the future. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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