Unplanned urban growth: land use/land cover change in the Guwahati Metropolitan Area, India

Abstract

Unplanned urban growth, particularly in developing countries has led to changes in land use/land cover (LULC). Numerous Indian cities face problems of unplanned LULC change due to nominal or non-existent planning efforts compounded by rapid urban population growth. The Guwahati Metropolitan Area (GMA) is one such urban centre. The present study assesses the trajectories of LULC change using Landsat imageries acquired in 1976, 1989, 2002 and 2015. Natural and semi natural vegetated area and artificial and natural water bodies decreased while built-up areas, cultivated and managed areas, and natural and semi natural non-vegetated areas increased. The built-up area increased from 23.9 in 1976 to 115.1 km² in 2015 becoming the dominant land cover class accounting for 41.8% of the total geographical area. During this period, natural and semi natural vegetated land were reduced by 88.9 km² at an annual rate of 2.2 km². Over the years there was an increasing trend of built-up land and cultivated and managed areas in the peripheral areas of the city while natural and semi natural vegetated land diminished. Consequently, as in many other developing countries, there is an urgent need for the governmental authorities and other stakeholders to implement effective urban planning policies.

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Unplanned urban growth: land use/land cover
change in the Guwahati Metropolitan Area, India
Chandra Kant Pawe & Anup Saikia
To cite this article: Chandra Kant Pawe & Anup Saikia (2018) Unplanned urban growth: land use/
land cover change in the Guwahati Metropolitan Area, India, Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of
Geography, 118:1, 88-100, DOI: 10.1080/00167223.2017.1405357
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00167223.2017.1405357
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GEOGRAFISK TIDSSKRIFTDANISH JOURNAL OF GEOGRAPHY, 2018
VOL. 118, NO. 1, 88100
https://doi.org/10.1080/00167223.2017.1405357
Unplanned urban growth: land use/land cover change in the Guwahati
Metropolitan Area, India
Chandra KantPawe and AnupSaikia
Department of Geography, Gauhati University, Guwahati, India
ABSTRACT
Unplanned urban growth, particularly in developing countries has led to changes in land use/land
cover (LULC). Numerous Indian cities face problems of unplanned LULC change due to nominal
or non-existent planning eorts compounded by rapid urban population growth. The Guwahati
Metropolitan Area (GMA) is one such urban centre. The present study assesses the trajectories of
LULC change using Landsat imageries acquired in 1976, 1989, 2002 and 2015. Natural and semi
natural vegetated area and articial and natural water bodies decreased while built-up areas,
cultivated and managed areas, and natural and semi natural non-vegetated areas increased. The
built-up area increased from 23.9 in 1976 to 115.1km2 in 2015 becoming the dominant land cover
class accounting for 41.8% of the total geographical area. During this period, natural and semi
natural vegetated land were reduced by 88.9km2 at an annual rate of 2.2km2. Over the years there
was an increasing trend of built-up land and cultivated and managed areas in the peripheral areas
of the city while natural and semi natural vegetated land diminished. Consequently, as in many
other developing countries, there is an urgent need for the governmental authorities and other
stakeholders to implement eective urban planning policies.
1. Introduction
Within a mere quarter of a century, the world population
has increased at a rapid rate from 5 billion in 1987 to 6 bil-
lion in 1999 and to 7 billion in 2011 (Haub & Gribble, 2011).
As part of this development, cities in the developing world
have undergone rapid urban expansion (Singh, 2013) and
this has generated tremendous pressure on land from both
unplanned and uncontrolled changes in land use/land
cover (LULC) (Seto et al., 2002). Additionally, urban sprawl
in most metropolitan areas, whether planned or not, put
pressure on ecosystems in peri-urban areas (Colantoni,
Grigoriadis, Sateriano, Venanzoni, & Salvati, 2016) contrib-
uting to LULC being one of the most important causes
of global environmental change (Chase, Pielke, Kittel,
Nemani, & Running, 1999; Houghton, Hackler, & Lawrence,
1999; Sala et al., 2000; Wu, Liu, Sohl, & Young, 2013).
Substantial LULC change is thus occurring in and around
cities, and small and medium-sized cities with populations
between 500,000 and 5million are the ones growing fast-
est. Population here is projected to rise by more than 32%
between 2015 and 2030 compared to 26% in large and
megacities (Birkmann, Welle, Solecki, Lwasa, & Garschagen,
2016). The secondary cities perform vital governance,
logistic and production functions at a sub-national or
sub-metropolitan region level within a system of cities in a
country (Roberts & Hohmann, 2014). Nearly half of the 100
million new urban residents expected in India by 2030 will
be living in secondary or mid-sized cities such as Agartala,
Imphal, Tiruppur and Tirupati, whereas one-quarter will
add to the population of the nation’s four megacities: Delhi,
Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore (Birkmann et al., 2016).
Urban policy research has traditionally focused on large
metropolitan cities and tended to pay less attention to
secondary (Andreasen, Agergaard, Kiunsi, & Namangaya,
2017), mid-sized (Tossonyi, 2017) or small cities (Bell &
Jayne, 2006, 2009). This is in spite of growing evidence
of the importance of mid-sized cities in contributing to
national economies (Bolton & Hildreth, 2013) and second
-
ary cities are projected to have a greater inuence upon
the future economic development of nations and larger
geographic regions (Roberts & Hohmann, 2014).
The Guwahati Metropolitan Area (GMA), the largest city
in north-east India, is one such example of a secondary
city and like numerous Indian cities it faces problems of
unplanned LULC change due to nominal or non-existent
planning eorts compounded by rapid urban population
growth. Ever since the capital of the state of Assam, India,
was shifted to Dispur, a locality within Guwahati, in 1972,
© 2017 The Royal Danish Geographical Society
KEYWORDS
Remote sensing; GIS; land
use/land cover change;
urban expansion; Guwahati
Metropolitan Area (GMA)
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 20 June 2017
Accepted12 November 2017
CONTACT Anup Saikia asaikia@gauhati.ac.in

GEOGRAFISK TIDSSKRIFTDANISH JOURNAL OF GEOGRAPHY 89
make up the GMA. The city is built on a landscape featuring
three broad geomorphic units: residual hills, alluvial plains
and marshy lands including water bodies. Nearly 60% of
the city’s total area is less than 60m amsl with the rest vary-
ing between 60–410m amsl (Phukan, Chetia, & Das, 2012).
Granitic gneisses, quartzites and granites are the dominant
rock types in the highlands, while Pleistocene-Holocene
sediments dominate the intermontane valleys (Das, Ray, &
Nain, 2014; Maswood,1982; Phukan et al.,2012).
The GMA consists of the Guwahati Municipal
Corporation (GMC) area, the North Guwahati Town
Committee (NGTC) area, the Amingaon Census Town
(ACT) and 21 revenue villages encompassing a total area of
275.0km2. Although this area accounts for only 1% of the
total area of north-east India, it is regarded as the gateway
to NER India because of its strategic location and economic
importance (Figure 1).
3. Methodology
3.1. Data
Due to the establishment of Guwahati as the capital of
Assam in 1972 and the availability of satellite data shortly,
thereafter, the time frame of the study spans from 1976 to
2015 over a period of 39years. Landsat MSS, Landsat 5 TM,
Landsat 7 ETM and Landsat 8 OLI TIRS satellite imagery at
13 year intervals were used in this study. These images
were obtained during the dry season (October to March)
since the study area tended to remain cloudy during the
monsoon season (April to September). Other reference
materials used in the study were a classied LULC map
of Guwahati in 1990 prepared by the Assam Remote
Sensing Application Centre (ASTEC), topographical maps
of Guwahati city (1967–1968 and 2003–2004) collected
from the Survey of India Oce, Guwahati and the GMDA
boundary map gathered from the Oce of the GMDA,
Guwahati and Google Earth images (Table 1).
3.2. Data pre-processing
Using ArcGIS 9.3 software (www.esri.com), the study area
boundary map was scanned and converted into a digital
raster image. It was geometrically rectied, using the near-
est neighbour resampling algorithm, and geo-referenced
to UTM Zone 46 North and WGS 84 datum. Consequently,
through on-screen digitization, the GMDA boundary vec-
tor layer was created which was used to subset the Landsat
imageries corresponding to the study area. In order to
match all the datasets to same pixel size, the 60×60m
Landsat MSS data was resampled to 30×30m pixel and
the snap raster function was used to resolve the problem
of pixel mismatch.
the city began receiving a large inow of people from
nearby areas. Between 1971 and 1991, the population of
Guwahati increased from 293,219 to 646,169 at a com-
pound annual growth rate of 4.0%. By 2011, when the last
decadal census was held, its population reached 968,549
and currently the city probably has well in excess of a mil-
lion people. Guwahati is recognized as the most important
city in north-east India (Anon, 2006) and plays a key role in
India in terms of geographical and strategic signicance.
Recently, under the Smart City Mission of Ministry of Urban
Development (MoUD), Government of India, the city was
among the top 20 cities of India to be developed as “smart
cities” (Anon, 2016). It is being touted as the lynch pin to
India’s Act East Policy and the gateway to South-East Asia
(Anon, 2017; Choudhury & Barua, 2001; Sarma, 2007). This
has increased the need for proper urban planning and e-
cient environmental management of the city.
Against this background, the objective of this study is
to quantitatively characterize the trajectories of land use/
land cover change in Guwahati city as an example of how
mid-sized cities cope with unplanned urban expansion.
The study integrates remote sensing (RS) and geographic
information system (GIS) technologies to quantify and
assess LULC dynamics in the GMA as these are widely rec-
ognized as eective tools for identifying and mapping land
use change in dierent areas such as metropolitan areas
(Sharma & Joshi, 2013; Xie, Fang, Lin, Gong, & Qiao, 2007;
Yang & Lo, 2002).
2. Study area
The GMA is situated on the banks of the Brahmaputra
River in north-east India. It is under the jurisdiction of the
Guwahati Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA)
the boundary of which extends between 26°2′ N to 26°16′
N latitude and 91°33′ E to 91°52′ E longitude. The city has
an undulating topography, with an elevation varying from
49.5 to 55.5 m.a.s.l. Interspersed with a large number of
hills which are mostly covered with forests and some
exposed rocky surfaces (Yadav & Barua, 2016), the GMA
has a number of wetlands, locally known as “beels”. Some
prominent wetlands are Deepor beel, Silsako beel, Bosrsola
beel and Rangagra beel, of which the rst is a Ramsar wet-
land. The city is characterized by a warm humid climate
with precipitation (200–350mm/year) concentrated dur-
ing the summer monsoon months from July to October.
The temperature varies between 12 and 14°C in winter
to 30–37°C during a wet summer season, with humidity
remaining high throughout the year barring a brief two-
month spell of winter during December and January. Low
Precambrian residual hills and inselbergs interspersed with
elongated low lying valley lls, marshes and wetlands

90 C. K. PAWE AND A. SAIKIA
3.3. Image classication and accuracy assessment
Based on eld work and visual interpretation of each sub-
set-image, a supervised classication was performed using
a maximum likelihood classier for the Landsat data-sets
to extract the land use/land cover characteristics of the
region. The number of observations per cluster was kept to
Figure 1.Location of the study area. Source: Authors.

GEOGRAFISK TIDSSKRIFTDANISH JOURNAL OF GEOGRAPHY 91
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Land use/land cover change
The LULC classication results are summarized for the
years 1976, 1989, 2002 and 2015 in Table 3. It is evident
that natural and semi-natural vegetated area was the pre-
dominant land cover class in 1976. However, these areas
have been placed under increasing pressure from built-up
areas and cultivated and managed areas. This reduced the
percentage of natural and semi natural vegetated areas
from 61.0% in 1976 to 28.7% in 2015. This land cover class
decreased at a rate of 2.2km2 per year. On the other hand,
built-up areas have increased from 23.9km2 in 1976 to
115.1km
2
in 2015 at a rate of 2.3km
2
per year. Incidentally,
the rate of gain in built-up areas and the rate of loss in
natural and semi-natural vegetated areas were approxi-
mately the same. Thus, over the years much of the increase
in built-up areas occurred at the expense of natural and
semi-natural vegetated areas. Additionally, over the years
small patches of built-up land emerged in areas inside the
notied reserved forests (RFs) and demarcated hills areas
within the city limits. Protected areas in India are classied
into National Parks, Wildlife Sanctuaries and RFs of which
the latter are not well protected and hence frequently
encroached upon. In RFs within the GMA encroachments
are made predominantly by the urban poor. In 2001, it was
found that a population of around 170,000 was residing in
the city hills (Borah & Gogoi, 2012). However, in addition
to the urban poor, unauthorized encroachment of some
pockets of land by commercial entities, such as high-end
hotels or wealthy urbanites had also occurred (Borthakur,
2017). Due to the concentrated human population, nearly
everything people do in urban areas has ecological impli-
cations (Forman, 2014). Urban expansion alters a city’s “big
seven”: natural vegetation; agricultural land; clean water;
jobs; housing; transport; and communities (Forman & Wu,
2016) albeit unequally by residents disaggregated on the
basis of economic strata. Among the urban poor, living
in informal settlements, soil erosion is often a problem in
partly because their houses are situated on steep slopes
(Forman, 2014). In the hill slopes of Guwahati, where
the informal settlements are located, mudslides are not
uncommon following periods of incessant precipitation.
Often lives are lost as poorly built structures and makeshift
a minimum of 30 per band (Janssen & Huurneman, 2001)
and it was ensured that clusters in the data did not overlap
(Saikia, Hazarika, & Sahariah, 2013). In adopting this classi-
cation system emphasis has been on increasing exibility
while maintaining mapability. Flexibility was identied as
the ability of the classication system to able to illustrate
enough classes to cope with the real world with a clear
and strict class boundary denition. Mapability is the abil-
ity of the classication system to dene a clear boundary
between two classes. Given the multi-functional land use
pattern of the Guwahati city (Borah & Bhagabati, 2015) and
the spatial resolution of the remote sensing data used, ve
LULC classes were identied to comprehensively record
the physical and cultural fabric of the study area. The pro-
posed LULC classes were based on the land cover classi-
cation scheme designed by the Food and Agricultural
Organization (Di Gregorio & Jansen, 2000; Latham, He,
Alinovi, DiGregorio, & Kalensky, 2002) (Table 2).
It was observed that some of the landscape features
were misclassied as they exhibited similar spectral sig-
natures. Such issues were resolved through a recoding
process with the help of reference images considered in
the study along with ground truth verication. An accu-
racy assessment was performed with a set of 40 random
ground points for each LULC class and for each year con-
sidered (1976, 1989, 2002, 2015). Overall accuracies of
85.25% (κ=0.75), 85.71% (κ=0.77), 87.72% (κ=0.83) and
89.83% (κ=0.86) for the 1976, 1989, 2002 and 2015 images
respectively were achieved. For a remotely sensed data-set
an overall accuracy of 85% is generally deemed satisfac-
tory (Anderson, Hardy, Roach, & Witmer, 1976). Finally, the
Land Change Modeler (LCM) module of TerrSet (https://
clarklabs.org/terrset/) was employed, following previous
studies (Evans, 2017; Sudhakar Reddy et al., 2017; Zhang,
Estoque, & Murayama,2017), to analyse the dierent
aspects of land cover change in the study area.
Table 1.Satellite data used in the study.
Satellite Resolution (m) Path/row Observation date
Landsat 2 MSS 60 147/042 December 16,
1976
Landsat 5 TM 30 137/042 March 9, 1989
Landsat 7 ETM 30 137/042 February 17, 2002
Landsat 8 OLI TIRS 30 137/042 March 17, 2015
Table 2.The land cover classification scheme.
Land cover classes
Artificial and natural water bodies Areas covered with water such as rivers, lakes, streams, reservoirs, canals, tanks, etc.
Built-up areas Areas covered with impervious surfaces like residential, commercial, industrial, transportation &
facilities.
Natural and semi-natural vegetated Areas covered with vegetation such as forest, shrub land areas.
Cultivated and managed areas Areas covered with vegetation of anthropogenic origin which requires human activities to maintain it
such as croplands, orchards, plantation, fallow lands, etc.
Natural and semi-natural non-bare vegetated areas Areas that do not have vegetation cover such as sandy areas, bare vegetated areas.

92 C. K. PAWE AND A. SAIKIA
population for the specic years viz. 1976, 1989, 2002 and
2015 were extrapolated on the basis of the compound
annual growth rate of the preceding year (Figure 2).
The cultivated and managed areas as well as the nat-
ural and semi-natural non-vegetated areas increased,
while articial and natural water bodies were reduced
from 11.9% in 1976 to 8.1% in 2015. Between 1976 and
2002 cultivated and managed areas increased by 15.2km
2
between 1976 and 2002, before subsequently falling by
9.3km2. This decline can be attributed to the increasing
pressure from the expansion of built-up areas.
Thus, over a period of 39years, a landscape dominated
by natural and semi-natural vegetated areas was steadily
transformed into a landscape with an extensive built-up
area. A vertical growth of the city also occurs, however, this
was not within the ambit of the present analysis (Figure 3).
As in Arusha, Tanzania, where migration is a central
dynamic that shapes urban transformation processes
(Andreasen et al., 2017), pull factors encourage migration
of the low income population from neighbouring areas
into the city of Guwahati. The relative lack of develop-
ment and income opportunities outside of agriculture
houses at tenuous hillside locations get buried by mud-
slides. 60 people lost their lives following landslides in
the hills of Guwahati during 2000–2007 (Das et al., 2014).
These informal settlements often lack access to basic
amenities such as drivable or all weather roads, piped
water supply and electricity. Guwahati is hardly unique in
these respects. Elsewhere too, the urban poor are forced
to occupy land illegally. They build their homes in infor-
mal human settlements (Aguilar & Guerrero, 2013) since
their housing requirements are rarely addressed eectively
(McGranahan, Mitlin, & Satterthwaite, 2008). A strong asso-
ciation between the expansion of illegal urban settlements
and socioeconomic factors, such as unemployment, has
been noted (Aguilar & Guerrero, 2013; Lopez, Heider, &
Scheran, 2017) and this is true for the urban poor of
Guwahati as well.
Between 1976 and 1989 the population grew by 67.1%
while the area of built-up land grew by 84.9%, indicating
a higher rate of land development in terms of population
growth. Subsequently, during 2002–2015, the rate of land
development further accelerated as the growth rate of
built-up land exceeded population growth fourfold. The
Table 3.LUCC classification in the GMA, for various years.
Landuse/landcover
categories 1976 1989 2002 2015 % cover 1976 % cover 1989 % cover 2002 % cover 2015
Rate of gain/loss
(km2yr−1)
Artificial and natural
water bodies
32.7 27.8 22.2 22.3 11.9 10.1 8.0 8.1 −03.0
Built-up 23.9 44.2 67.0 115.1 8.7 16.1 24.3 41.8 +2.3
Natural and semi-
natural vegetated
areas
167.9 142.0 118.2 78.9 61.0 51.6 42.9 28.7 −2.2
Cultivated and
managed areas
47.8 57.6 63.1 53.8 17.4 20.9 22.9 19.5 +0.1
Natural and semi-
natural non-vegetated
areas (area in km2)
2.4 3.2 4.4 4.7 0.8 1.1 1.6 1.7 +0.1
Figure 2.Proportion of various LULC categories. Source: Authors.

GEOGRAFISK TIDSSKRIFTDANISH JOURNAL OF GEOGRAPHY 93
managed areas registered a net loss of 39.2 and 9.2km2,
respectively, amounting to a total loss of 48.5km2.
It is evident that in recent years the built-up area has
expanded into areas which were previously either natural
vegetated or human induced vegetation managed land.
Most importantly, the cultivated and managed areas which
showed a steady rise between 1976 and 2002 experienced
a decline of 17.2% in their areal extension during 2002–
2015. In the last decade or so, a considerable number of
cultivated and managed areas have been transformed to
built-up area (Figure 4).
4.3. Contribution to net change in land use/land
cover classes
The contribution of land use/land cover classes to net
change in a particular class have been summarized in
Table 5. Here, the analysis has been performed for only
three land cover classes: built-up, natural and semi-nat-
ural vegetated areas and cultivated and managed areas.
The reason for this is that the remaining land cover classes
showed insignicant variations. The growth in built-up
area was compensated for by the decrease in natural and
semi-natural vegetated area and cultivated and managed
area (Table 5). Between 1976 and 2015, an area of 51.2km2
in neighbouring rural areas serve as push factors to the
largest city in north-east India. In the state of Assam, 45%
of rural households are still without electricity (Palit &
Bandyopadhyay, 2017). Moving to the only large city is a
way out of darkness.
With land rent and housing being high towards the
city centre, such migrants have no choice but to set-up
informal housing near the outer limits of the city. Despite
this, there is a “lack of political will to mitigate this problem
... and to attack the structural causes of illegality, social
insecurity, and the environmental degradation” (Aguilar
& Guerrero, 2013) associated with informal human settle-
ments (IHS).
4.2. Net change in land use/land cover classes
The net change experienced by each land use/land cover
category during the time periods considered (1976–1989,
1989–2002 and 2002–2015) are presented in Table 4.
Throughout the study period, built-up areas experienced
the highest net gain compared to all other land cover
classes. The period 2002–2015 recorded a net gain in this
category of 48.1km2 which was more than double that of
the previous period (22.7km2). During this time, natural
and semi-natural vegetated areas as well as cultivated and
Figure 3.The classified images for 1976, 1989, 2002 and 2015. Source: Authors.

94 C. K. PAWE AND A. SAIKIA
was due to the development of natural and semi- natural
vegetated areas while the losses in the same category can
be attributed to the increase in built-up area. Between
1976 and 2002, the cultivated and managed land gained
more land from natural and semi-natural vegetated areas
(28.6km2) than it lost to built-up area (15.1km2). However,
during 2002–2015 a greater proportion of cultivated and
managed areas were developed to built-up area while con-
siderably less was added from natural and semi-natural
vegetated areas. This indicated that between 1976 and
2002, the natural and semi-natural vegetated land was
being transformed to cultivated and managed areas that
were later converted to built-up land. However, in recent
years the land transformation process has intensied as
of natural and vegetated areas was converted to built-up
area. In comparison, 38.4km2 of cultivated and managed
areas were developed into built-up area, but the transfor-
mation rate showed an increasing trend over the years
indicating that the former would be under serious pressure
from built-up area in the years ahead.
Of all the land cover classes, the natural and semi-natu-
ral vegetated area class has suered maximum deteriora-
tion. The pre-dominant natural and semi-natural vegetated
area was reduced by 94.1km2 by 2015, of which 42.8km2
was transformed to cultivated and managed areas. The
changes in cultivated and managed areas provide an
insight into the land transformation process occurring in
the study area. The gain in cultivated and managed areas
Table 4.Changes in LULC in the GMA.
Landuse/landcover
categories 1976–1989 1989–2002 2002–2015 % change 1976–1989 % change 1989–2002 % change 2002–2015
Artificial and natural water
bodies
−4.9 −5.6 +0.1 −17.5 −25.3 +0.4
Built-up +20.3 +22.7 +48.1 +45.8 +33.9 +41.7
Natural and semi-natural
vegetated areas
−25.9 −23.7 −39.2 −18.2 −20.1 −49.7
Cultivated and managed
areas
+9.7 +5.5 −9.2 +16.9 +8.7 −17.2
Natural and semi-natural
non-vegetated areas (area
in km2)
+0.7 +1.1 +0.3 +23.4 +27.1 +6.6
Figure 4.LULC based on percentage of change for the three time periods. Source: Authors.
Table 5.Contribution to net change in the LULC categories for different periods.
Landuse/landcover categories
Built-up Natural and semi-natural vegetated areas Cultivated and managed areas
76–89 89–02 02–15 76–89 89–02 02–15 76–89 89–02 02–15
Artificial and natural water bodies +0.34 +0.44 +0.53 +3.41 +2.73 +0.03 +0.92 +0.83 −0.35
Built-up 0 −14.45 −12.59 −24.25 −5.45 −9.68 −23.29
Natural and semi-natural vegetated areas +14.45 +12.5 +24.25 0 +14.34 +14.29+14.21
Cultivated and managed areas +5.45 +9.68 +23.29 −14.34 −14.29 −14.21 0
Natural and semi natural non-vegetated areas
(area in km2)
+0.09 +0.04 +0.05 −0.54 +0.36 −0.82 −0.05 +0.05 +0.14

GEOGRAFISK TIDSSKRIFTDANISH JOURNAL OF GEOGRAPHY 95
Figure 5.(a) Important landmarks and (b) concentric circles from the city centre within GMA. Source: Authors.

96 C. K. PAWE AND A. SAIKIA
Figure 6.LULC change and distance from the city core for (a) Built-up (b) Natural and semi natural vegetated area and (c) Cultivated and
managed area categories. Source: Authors.

GEOGRAFISK TIDSSKRIFTDANISH JOURNAL OF GEOGRAPHY 97
Silsako beel, Jalukabari, Amingaon and North Guwahati
were aected by this.
Much of the vegetated area was concentrated between
a 2500 and 12,000m zone of RFs and hills (Figure 6(b)).
During 1976–2015 these vegetated areas were reduced
considerably as a result of encroachment of low income
residential pockets in the hills and RFs grew. In the sum-
mers that follow a period of torrential or sustained precip-
itation, mudslides in these hills are not uncommon; often
leading to loss of human lives. Towards the city periphery,
the vegetation cover was drastically aected due to con-
version to built-up and cultivated and managed areas for
various commercial or educational purposes.
The cultivated and managed area curves were nar-
rowly juxtaposed indicating that over the years this land
cover class has been comparatively less aected. However,
between 2002 and 2015, signicant amounts of cultivated
and managed areas were lost in the 4000–9500m zone
while a large area was gained from 13,000m and outwards
till the GMA boundary limits. This would seem to indicate
that the pressure on cultivated and managed areas tends
to decline away from the city centre.
How do the residential areas get subsumed by the
urban expansion? Do such areas get developed prior to
or following the settlement of residents? The new residen-
tial areas are not “developed” per se, but rather illegally
settled upon. These settlements tend to be located on the
hill slopes of the city, lightly wooded areas, the fringes of
protected areas or vacant government land. They remain
undeveloped and over time minimal facilities are extended
to these areas. In sample areas surveyed, a single water
pipeline served a handful of informal homes with water
being pumped illegally from nearby for an undisclosed
petty bribe, almost as a form of monthly rent. Likewise,
a considerable amount of both natural and semi natural
vegetated land and cultivated and managed land has been
directly converted to built-up area (Table 5).
4.4. Land use/land cover change with distance
In this section, the distribution of land use land cover
classes in terms of distance from the city centre is exam-
ined. The Fancy Bazar area (Figure 5(a)), which is one of
the oldest business areas of Guwahati city was considered
as the city core. In the analysis 40 concentric circles with
widths of 500m each were created emanating from the
city core (Figure 5(b)). The distance between city core and
up to 8000m out included the major urban centres within
the city, the area between 8000 and 13,000m out con-
tained the municipal boundary areas and areas further out
than 13,000m represented the city’s outermost limits. The
analysis was conned to built-up, natural and semi natural
vegetative area and cultivated and managed area only, as
the other classes exhibited insignicant variations.
The built-up curves of each year showed similar pat-
terns over the study area with increasing distance from the
city centre. A high built-up concentration was observed
within 8000m as most of the urban centres are situated
inside this belt. The area between 8000–13000m con-
tained the city hills and major waterbodies, and with that
the area of built-up land in this zone declined signicantly.
Beyond 13000m and out to city limit the distribution of
built-up area was mainly connected tothe city airport and
a number of defence establishments. During 2002–2015
the expansion of built-up land had accentuated in the
area between 4000 and 10000m from the city core most
likely due to a large extent of built-up area cropping up in
some previously unoccupied tracts. Fringe areas like the
Figure 7.Low income informal settlements in the peripheral areas of the GMA. Most tin-roofed houses lack electricity, piped water
supply, sanitation facilities and metalled all-weather roads. Source: Authors.

98 C. K. PAWE AND A. SAIKIA
Cowan, & Sheppard, 2017) and the fact that a sharp loss of
vegetated areas occurred in the GMA is a matter of concern
and one that requires attention and monitoring.
Although the GMDA has a city Master Plan-2025
(GMDA, 2009), its lack of implementation has seen a rise
in illegal settlements inside the notied reserved forests
and hills within the study area. Rapid population growth
has pushed the expansion of the urban areas in south-
ern Guwahati into the suburban areas and most of these
expansions are unplanned (Borbora & Das, 2014). With
incremental reductions in green cover stemming from
urbanization, the phenomenon of a summer urban heat
island (UHI) eect of over 2o C has occurred in the GMA
(Borbora & Das, 2014).
The LULC change analysis seen in relation to distance
from the city centre explored key information on the issue
of urban sprawl in the GMA. It was observed that towards
the city periphery the built-up as well as the cultivated and
managed areas increased over the years while natural and
semi-natural vegetation recorded signicant losses. These
unplanned built-up establishments have emerged along
the national highways 31 and 27 which pass through the
south and south-west ends of the city, respectively. There
is an urgent need for an action plan focusing on identi-
cation of illegal settlements and built-up establishments
to nd solutions for both illegal settlers and conservation
of the city’s natural resources including the hills, RFs and
wetlands.
Urban vegetation helps keep cities cool, acts as a natural
lter and noise absorber, improves microclimates as well
as the physical and aesthetic quality of natural resources
(Patarkalashvili, 2017). Urban forests help maintain the
quality of life of urban residents by providing various eco-
system services, improving the urban environment and
supporting physical, mental and social health (Nesbitt et
al., 2017). Despite such benets, little has been done to
protect the hills and RFs of the GMA. LULC change moni-
toring for cities is especially needed in developing coun-
tries (Zhao, Jensen, & Zhan, 2017) and the GMA is a case in
point, wherein the urban land use has acted as a predator
(Colantoni et al., 2016) on the natural non-urban area. This
trend is expected to exacerbate over time without planned
intervention. If Guwahati is to full the goals of a smart
city that the Indian government has recently envisioned
(Varghese, 2016), this trend of unplanned, haphazard
and illegal development of built-up land at the expense
of natural vegetation must be checked and strict imple-
mentation of the Master Plan-2025 has to be initiated by
the authorities and its stakeholders.
Our examination of the GMA reveals some elements
of urban expansion and IHS that are common to urban
centres in other developing countries that are often char-
acterized by urban sprawl (Hegazy & Kaloop, 2015). Urban
an electricity connection or two would be acquired by
greasing the palms of an unscrupulous ocial. In India,
consumers often draw electricity by hooking a wire to the
nearby utility poles and up to 20% electricity generated is
lost to theft (Gaur & Gupta, 2016). Residents in the GMA’s
outer limits are prepared to acquire electricity illegally,
reecting a situation hardly uncommon to urban poor in
similar contexts in India or other developing countries.
As such, without any substantial resources at their dis-
posal, low cost housing dots the outer limits of Guwahati
(Figure 7). Houses are covered with a tin roof and walls
made of split bamboo; the latter ubiquitously available
nearly everywhere. As incomes rise, split bamboo walls
are slowly converted to more permanent walls made of
bricks or cement. In a country where various identica-
tion documents like birth certicates, voter identication
cards or ration cards can be inexpensively and fraudulently
acquired or forged (Sadiq, 2009), these marginal residents
and their housing structures are over time often given a
degree of legitimacy by local ocials and politicians on
deferred promises of votes during elections.
5. Conclusion
This paper analysed the LULC dynamics of the GMA from
1976 to 2015 using RS and GIS along with other reference
data. It monitored the urban expansion and vegetation
loss experienced in the GMA and explored the relation-
ship between LULC changes and distance from the city
centre. Signicant changes occurred during 1976–2015.
A trend of extensive replacement of natural and semi-
natural vegetated land and cultivated and managed land
with built-up land occurred. During this 39-year period,
the built-up area increased nearly fourfold by 380% from
23.9km2 in 1976 to 115.1km2 in 2015. This proliferation of
built-up area was characterized by unplanned and haphaz-
ard growth. The unplanned growth in Guwahati ts into a
trend discernible in numerous Third World urban centres
(Ameen & Mourshed, 2017; Ding, Zhong, Shearmur, Zhang,
& Huisingh, 2015).
The natural and semi-natural vegetated area which was
the dominant land cover class in 1976 declined by more
than 50% to account for only 28.7% of the total geograph-
ical area in 2015. An increase of 91.2km2 of built-up area
occurred along with a concomitant decrease in 88.9km
2
in
natural and semi natural vegetated areas. A similar result
was found in a study on urban heat islands in the GMA
(Borthakur, 2017). This is in accordance with earlier studies
noting that the green belt zone and eco-sensitive areas
in Guwahati were under continuous pressure from urban
expansion (Borthakur & Nath, 2012).
Urban forests perform a wide variety of ecosystem func-
tions (Anguluri & Narayanan, 2017; Nesbitt, Hotte, Barron,

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Disclosure statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
Chandra Kant Pawe http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7926-5367
Anup Saikia http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0448-4869
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