Remote sensing and Spatial Metrics in monitoring Urban Sprawl
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Date
JULY, 2019
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Abstract
Urbanisation has become a universal truth found everywhere in the world. According
to the United Nations the trend of inhabitant‟s growth in inner-cities is expected to
heighten to 72% by 2050. Urbanisation, though an important international spectacle,
has become a daunting challenge worldwide because dependable and precise data
essential for growth of urban plans are not often readily available for planning. In the
absence of such planning, quick development causes chaotic and unexpected growth
of urban centres with a growing populace that results in congestion and turns into a
problem of inadequate social infrastructure. It is through a collective effort of having
material on historical and current land use, that scheduling and monitoring of the
sprawl can become effective through the use of auxiliary plans for monitoring spatial
(X, Y) positions and land use trends in its completest to produce an amalgamation of
improved land use, the creation of real infrastructures to deal with the region‟s
surroundings and pastoral areas, and the advancing synopsis for forecasting urban
procedures for land use forms and land use modifications. Urban growth has an
important impact on the rural peripheral territories located around the major urban
centres which themselves soon become uncontrolled urbanised. To evaluate the
geographical situation and the consequences of urbanisation in rural space, the urban
sprawl of Ga Municipal Assembly (GA) which had evolved from Ga rural districts is
monitored by remote sensing over a thirty-year period. The urban burden on these
rural spaces is characterised by different land cover/land use conversions and land use
conflicts. This study scrutinises the active change forms in the expansion course of
the GA Municipalities over a period of 30 years and consequently attempts to
categorise the urban growth forms and describe the probable driving forces causative
to these variations in the GA municipalities by means of remotely sensed data and
population count data. Spatial and time-based dynamics information of expansion
progression was computed using Landsat imagery and socio-economic data,
supervised classification procedure using the maximum likelihood technique in ENVI
5.0 software and the post-classification change detection method. The results indicate
that the total population had increased from 157,985 persons in 1986 population
projection census to 1,039,687 persons in 2016 census projection as a result of
migration, displacement and natural population growth. The main land use in the
study area currently is Settlements which had increased from 7.10% (55.395Km²) iniii
1986 to 62.09% (482.9175Km²) in 2016. Dense Vegetation had decreased from
69.65% (539.1459Km²) coverage in 1986 to just 7.44% (57.834Km²) in 2016 due to
transference to other uses. The foremost driver of Urbanisation was due to
immigration. The study investigated the status of Ga area, by identifying,
characterizing and quantifying the urban growth using remote sensing techniques
coupled with statistical data calculation. This approach was effective in detecting
LULC modification and measuring the range of the urban expansion. Moreover, it
was discovered that, the Urbanization progression was powerfully associated with
augmented inhabitants. It is recommended that, to protect Agricultural lands and
proper Land use planning for an advancing economy, there should be:
i. A Strict Land Use planning policy developed and adhered to for any
developmental project conducted in the District which must take into
consideration Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
ii. The planning should include designated belt areas for agricultural lands
and forests to prevent conversions as well as protection zones for water
bodies.
iii. There should be decentralized development driven from the district for
social amenities and infrastructures to preserve cultural identity instead of
immigration driven that also imports city values to replace cultural values.
Description
A thesis submitted to the College of Engineering, Department of Geomatic Engineering, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Science.
Keywords
Remote Sensing, Spatial Metrics, Evaluation, Urban Sprawl