Dynamicity of Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) An analysis from peri-urban and rural neighbourhoods of Durgapur Municipal Corporation (DMC) in India

The availability of better economic possibilities and well-connected transportation networks has attracted people to migrate to peri-urban and rural neighbourhoods, changing the landscape of regions outside the city and fostering the growth of physical infrastructure. Using multi-temporal satellite images, the dynamics of Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) changes, the impact of urban growth on LULC changes, and regional environmental implications were investigated in the peri-urban and rural neighbourhoods of Durgapur Municipal Corporation in India. The study used different case studies to highlight the study area's heterogeneity, as the phenomenon of change is not consistent. Landsat TM and OLI-TIRS satellite images in 1991, 2001, 2011, and 2021 were used to analyze the changes in LULC types. We used the relative deviation (RD), annual change intensity (ACI), uniform intensity (UI) to show the dynamicity of LULC types (agriculture land; built-up land; fallow land; vegetated land; mining area; and water bodies) during 1991–2021. This study also applied the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) to measure environmental sensitivity zones and find out the causes of LULC changes. According to LULC statistics, agriculture land, built-up land, and mining area increased by 51.7, 95.46, and 24.79 ​km², respectively, feom 1991 to 2021. The results also suggested that built-up land and mining area had the greatest (LST), whereas water bodies and vegetated land showed the lowest LST. Moreover, this study looked at the relationships among LST, spectral indices (Normalized Differenced Built-up Index (NDBI), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), and Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI)), and environmental sensitivity. The results showed that all of the spectral indices have the strongest association with LST, indicating that built-up land had a far stronger influence on the LST. The spectral indices indicated that the decreasing trends of vegetated land and water bodies were 4.26 and 0.43 km²/a, respectively, during 1991–2021. In summary, this study can help the policy-makers to predict the increasing rate of temperature and the causes for the temperature increase with the rapid expansion of built-up land, thus making effective peri-urban planning decisions.