APPRAISAL OF LAND USE PATTERNS OF DERA GHAZI KHAN, PUNJAB-PAKISTAN

Abstract

Land-use changes and consequent urban growth is a cyclic process of transforming from predominately agrarian to urban land use of an area with the passage of time. Without proper urban planning urban development and expansion showed the adverse impact on the city and its residents. The same was the case with Dera Ghazi Khan, an important city of south Punjab, Pakistan.
The present study has been carried out to have an insight into implementable urban planning and temporal analysis of urban growth patterns of Dera Ghazi Khan-an expanding city of Punjab. In this paper, land-use change pattern of Dera Ghazi Khan City is investigated by using multi-temporal satellite data along with RS and GIS techniques. Data was obtained from the free web of USGS and satellite images of Landsat 5 TM (1998); Landsat 7 ETM (2000) and Landsat 8 OLI (2016) were downloaded. Different land uses were devised with supervised classification to design analyse the temporal change studies. Remotely sensed images have been analysed by comparing post-classification methods. This study demonstrated that built-up areas have increased from the period 1989-2000, 2000- 2016 and 1998-2016 is 180.64 Km2 , 95.00 Km2 and 275.64 Km2 respectively. By applying post-change
detection techniques, the study explored that from the period 1989 to 2016, 5.29 percent vegetation class had been converted into built-up class and bare soil. Bare soil class is the principal class of the study area and it showed a growing tendency with 7.78 percent increase in last 28 years. The water body class showed a negative tendency in change i.e. 0.04 percent area was changed into bare soil class categories. It was concluded that the study area has experienced rapid urban growth and was in a developmental phase. The results indicated that there had been an apparent and uneven urban growth pattern in Dera Ghazi Khan in terms of its use from1989 to 2016. The study identified that the geospatial techniques such as remote sensing and GIS are highly effective in analysing rate and spatial pattern of urban growth and land-use change in an area.