Impact of urbanization and land surface temperature changes in a coastal town in Kerala, India
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Impact of urbanization and land surface temperature changes in a coastal town in Kerala, India P. Arulbalaji1 · D. Padmalal1 · K. Maya1 Received: 3 January 2020 / Accepted: 22 July 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Rapid urbanization and unscientific developments have resulted in large-scale degradation of the environment around major cities all over the world. The problem is acute in many tropical and sub-tropical Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) having high population density and are undergoing rapid economic developments. Lack of adequate studies to contain the ill-effects of developments is major challenge before the decision makers at different levels. In this paper, an attempt has been carried out to examine the spatio-temporal changes in urban growth and land surface temperature (LST) responses in a coastal city in SW India, the Thiruvananthapuram city (Kerala) that enjoys a tropical wet climate, as an example. Landsat imageries of 1988, 2000 and 2019 have been used to estimate the extent of urban growth and LST changes. The study revealed a marked decrease in vegetation cover (125–71 km2) and barren land (7–4 km2) in the area during 1988–2019. The built-up area showed a marked increase from 10 to 68 km2. It was noticed that the average LST has been increased from 26.5 °C to 28.1 °C during the study period. The study stresses the imminent need for strengthening the extent of green cover in the area and make developments more environment-friendly. Keywords Land use/land cover changes · Climate change · Urban heat Islands · Southwest India
Introduction Most parts of the world are being urbanized year after year due to migration of people from rural areas to the city centre. As per the United Nations report, in 1950 a total of 30% of the world population segregated and lived in urban areas and the quantity rise to 55% in 2018 (United Nations 2018). Predictive models reveal that the figure would reach to about 68% by the year 2050 with the highest rate in developing countries (United Nations 2018). The ever expanding urban sprawl towards non-urban lands is a common phenomenon in most of the developing and developed world (Yanan et al. 2011; Yue et al. 2013). Rapid population growth accompanied by uncontrolled building constructions and other This article is part of a Topical Collection in Environmental Earth Sciences on “GeosphereAnthroposphere Interlinked Dynamics: Geocomputing and New Technologies”, guest edited by Sebastiano Trevisani, Marco Cavalli, and Fabio Tosti. * P. Arulbalaji [email protected] 1
National Centre for Earth Science Studies, Akkulam, Thiruvananthapuram 695011, India
economic activities could enhance many times the pace of urban sprawl and land surface expansion which in turn lead to severe environmental crisis. Like many other developing countries, India’s urbanization is also rising exponentially in the past few decades. In India, the pace of urbanization was slow in nineteenth century and also in the first half of twentieth
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