%0 Journal Article
%T Rapid Urban Expansion and Its Implications on Geomorphology: A Remote Sensing and GIS Based Study
%A S. N. Mohapatra
%A Padmini Pani
%A Monika Sharma
%J Geography Journal
%D 2014
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2014/361459
%X Topography, vegetation, climate, water table, and even the anthropogenic activities all are affected by urban growth through diverse mechanisms. The present study focuses on the implications of urban expansion on geomorphology in the historical city of Gwalior in central India. The expansion of urban area has been quantified by deriving data for four decades (1972¨C2013) from the Landsat images. The results show that the urban built-up area has increased by 08.48£¿sq. km during the first eighteen years (1972¨C1990) which has increased to 16.28£¿sq. km during the next sixteen years (1990¨C2006). The built-up area has gone up to 23.19£¿sq. km in the next seven years (2006¨C2013). Overall during the last 40 years the growth of the urban built-up is nearly three times of the built-up areas in 1972. The average decadal growth rate of population is 27.28 percent while that of built-up land is 36.29 percent. The construction activities have affected important geomorphic features such pediplain, buried pediplain, residual hills, and denudational hills. It was concluded that, instead of shortsighted urban development, proper measures should be taken in accordance with scientific planning for the urban expansion of the city in the future. 1. Introduction Urbanization and urban growth has been considered as one of the essential indicators of economic growth and development of a country. Along with the increase of population, cities are growing rapidly in physical dimension in the past few decades. This process of urbanization has brought about significant changes in landscape pattern and land cover of the area concerned. At the same time it has caused various negative effects in terms of physical environment such as loss of agricultural land, surface and groundwater depletion, changes in geomorphic features, flooding, and landslides. With the increase of population day by day it has become inevitable to adopt proper urban planning to attain a sustainable environmental stability of an area. Rapid growth of urbanisation along with poor planning and unregulated industrial activities causes contamination in surface as well as groundwater [1]. In urban geomorphology man acts as physical process to change the natural terrain to cityscape. Urban geomorphology is the surface component of urban geology and forms the important subfield of environmental geology [2]. Towns and cities are mostly expanded in accordance to the relief of the terrain and the relief changes as per the planning and needs of construction [3]. The other factors that influenced the geomorphological process in
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/geography/2014/361459/