Impact of Built Environment on Land use of Rapidly Growing Tehsil Takht Bhai, District Mardan
Impact of Built Environment on Land use of Rapidly Growing Tehsil Takht Bhai, District Mardan
Sajjad Ali1, Atta-ur-Rahman1 and Sher Ali2*
ABSTRACT
This study is an attempt to find out the impact of built environment on land use of tehsil Takht Bhai, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, for the period of 1985-2015. Spatial techniques like Geographic information system and remote sensing are used to detect land use changes. This study is carried out at three levels; initially the whole tehsil is studied for land use change analysis by comparing 1985 and 2015 Landsat images. Secondly, four sample union councils were targeted for medium level analysis. Thirdly, seven sample villages are targeted for micro level. The Landsat images of 1985 and 2015 are obtained from the open source Global Land Cover Facility (GLCF). The analysis revealed that the cultivated area was 146 square kilometer in 1985. It was observed that the cultivated area in the tehsil is reduced to 91 square kilometer, by losing 55 square kilometer area from 1986 to 2015, with a rate of 1.6 square kilometer area per year. If this process of land utilization for infrastructure instead of farming remains at the same speed till 2055, there will be no agricultural land in the tehsil for farming. Population increase is the main cause of such firm land loss. Statistical technique like central tendencies, dispersion and co-efficient of correlation were applied on population, area under built-up environment, cultivated area and crop production in the study area. During the study period from 1985-2015, rapid physical expansion is reported in the study area and strong correlation was observed between population growth and environmental built.
To share on other social networks, click on any share button. What are these?
