Urban Land Use Dynamics and Assessment of Environmental Risks in Bhowali Urban Zone, Kumaon Lesser Himalaya, India using Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System

The study monitored the land use dynamics and its environmental risks in the fast-growing township of Bhowali situated in Kumaon Lesser Himalaya, district Nainital, Uttarakhand, India using an integrated geospatial technique. The major objective of the study is to assess the trends and magnitude of land use changes and assess its environmental implications over the past three decades. The supervised digital interpretation of Landsat TM data of 1991 and Landsat OLI/TIRS data of 2021 was carried out using QGIS 3.16 software to map and monitor land use dynamics. The drivers of urban growth and its environmental impacts have been investigated by analyzing the information generated from field surveys, focused group discussions and key respondents’ interviews and interpretation of secondary data collected from diverse sources. The study’s findings indicate that the built-up area and vegetation cover of the Bhowali urban zone have increased by about 26.68% (i.e. 1.83 km²) and 6.27% (i.e. 0.43 km²) respectively. In contrast, the area under the cultivated land decreased by about 32.95% (i.e. 2.26 km²) over the past three decades. This clearly indicated that the urban built-up area has been fast encroaching upon the natural forests and prime cultivated land in the absence of an urban land use policy. The study also observed that 55% of the built-up area of the town is located in an environmentally unsafe zone disrupting hydrological processes and increasing the vulnerability of the town to the risk of slope failures, landslides and flash-flood under climate change. Further, the unplanned urban growth is increasing the socio-economic disparities by increasing the proportion of urban poor and the population with no access to drinking water, toilets and road, increasing the susceptibility of a large population, particularly underprivileged and poor, to a variety of climate change-induced risks. It is, therefore, inevitable to evolve and implement a comprehensive urban land use policy and a framework for climate-smart urban development considering the environmental sensitivity, ecological carrying capacity and projected trends in climate change.