The status and trends of urban land use/land cover (LULC) significantly impacts the quality of human life and urban ecosystems. Pimpri-Chinchwad (PCMC) is one of the rapidly urbanizing municipal corporation which has been experiencing vast modifications in land use/land cover in the last few decades. This paper is an attempt to assess the spatio-temporal variations in LULC over PCMC region during the last 14 years. The research involves collection and processing of satellite images (Landsat TM) for 1997 and 2011 as well as preparation of land use/land cover map of PCMC region. Supervised classification using maximum likelihood classifier was performed to obtain LULC, where accuracy of the classification obtained was quite promising (Overall accuracy 90.81% and 89.68% and Kappa 0.86 (1997) and 0.88 (2011)). During the period of assessment LULC map results showed a striking pattern in the study area. In the last 14 years the built up areas have increased by 4% while the areas under vegetation have considerably increased by 6%. Increase in the vegetation cover is due to the various governmental schemes like afforestation on hills and hill slopes, establishment of parks and green spaces, etc. The amount of barren land has decreased significantly by 8% while the hills (slopes) decreased by 2%, due to increasing demand of land for residential and commercial purposes.
Land use/land cover (LULC), supervised classification
