International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Invention ISSN (Online): 2319 – 7722, ISSN (Print): 2319 – 7714 www.ijhssi.org ||Volume 6 Issue 7||July. 2017 || PP.21-27 A Geographical Review of the Land Use Patterns of Kanpur City, India *Joginder Ahlawat Extension Faculty, Pt. N.R.S. Government College, Rohtak Corresponding Author: *Joginder Ahlawat Abstract: Land Use is a systematic study of utilisation of land resource by human society to fulfil their multiple needs. It includes various facets of economic, socio-cultural and political needs. These dynamic facets create different types of land use patterns which resulted into the development at local and regional level. Recently, more emphasis has been lead on the eco-friend production and consumption. The present study is an effort to identify and analyze the pattern of existing land use patterns in Kanpur city. Keywords: Land use, Natural resources, GIS-Remote sensing, Land utilization, Imagery, Residential Area, Industrial Area, Built-up Area,, KMC(Kanpur Municipal Corporation) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date of Submission: 15-07-2017 Date of acceptance: 31-07-2017 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- I. Introduction Changing Land use is one among the most important environmental challenges for environmental managers across the globe now the days. Land use is well known as the conversion of a land for a specific purposes like agricultural activities, housing, entertainment, industry and transportation like purposes in pieces or in whole in any region. Nature of land uses is dynamic and changes comes during the course of time. Land use pattern refers to the distribution and interaction of natural and man-made resources that lie on the earth surface. “Many geographers has argued that the primary aim of the study about the general pattern of land use is to portray the plan and distribution of land to various uses ranging from field to factory, forest to foundry, pasture to pond and sandy stretch to settlement” (Kumar, 1986) Historically land is an important part of earth’s physical environment having different natural and human uses. Development of human civilization bring man more wise and efficient to utilize resources and when he equipped with skill and scientific knowledge, land become most important natural resource that would be reshaped/transformed to fulfil his needs for different purposes. He started the conversion of natural landscapes into cultural land scape asnew land uses. Resultantly, variety of land use categories has emergedglobally. The reflections of interaction between man and nature deciding the composition of land uses of a particular regionin any dimension. The land-use and land-cover pattern of a region is an outcome of natural and socio-economic factors and their utilization by man in time and space Land use/Land cover change has become a vital component for natural resources management and monitoring of environmental change, for various developmental and resource planning activities at global and regional scale (Kandrika and Roy, 2008; Roth et al., 2016). There are many categories of land use within the broad categories like physical, social and economic categories. These categories generally operate together but in circumstances they did separately also. “There are two sets of limits which determine the pattern of land use in any particular region. First, the absolute or outer limits which are set by nature and second, the relative limits which are set by culture, human attitudes and actions that determine the range of actual and probable use within the limits” (Zimmermann, 1951). Human society from its historic evolution on earth surface has been using natural resources to fulfil their basic needs. During the course of historic development of human society, they have expanded their basic needs and desires, ultimately that forced them to produce more and more foods, goods and facilities. This greedy and selfish human behaviour became fatal for nature and further produce imbalance between human being and natural resource availability. Ultimately, all this hampered naturalenvironmentmarked some problems for human society.The most common reason for the problems is rapid population growth and unplanned uses of resources, particularly these problems have high magnitude in our urban spaces, our towns and cities. Exponential population growth is putting constant pressure on natural resources; leading to over exploitation of natural resources to an alarming state in the 21st century (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000). The urban areas indicate the high rate of population growth than their rural counterparts. Urbanisation in India is getting momentum after liberalization and globalisation of economy in nineties. Cities growing rapidly due to more employment opportunities, easy access to health, education and other facilities. It bring burden to www.ijhssi.org 21 | Page A Geographical Review of the Land Use Patterns of Kanpur City, India their existing resources. Land resources have become of prime concern for planners because sprawling cities are eating more and more land to continue their functions to fulfil the needs and desires of their residents. II. Study area: Kanpur extended at 26° 26' North and 80° 19'' East coordinates and kknown as the financial and industrial capital of Uttar Pradesh. Kanpur is situated on the banks of the river Ganga. Population of the city was2.9 million as per the census 2011.Kanpur is famous for leather and textile goods of superior quality. It is now one of the main industrialized cities. Kanpur city is famous for leather, wool, cotton, vegetable oil mills, chemical works and sugar refineries. Formerly known as Manchester of the country. Kanpur is the biggest city of the State of Uttar Pradesh and is main centre of commercial, industrial and educational activities. The percentage of the workforce involved in the primary, industrial and service sectors are 4 per cent, 31 per cent and 65 per cent respectively. The city is bound between two rivers, the Ganges in the North and the river Pandu in the south. It is a linear pattern of settlements developed between rivers and the railway lines. City is well connected with road and railway routes to rest of India. Figure 1. Study Area Map Objectives of the study: Current paper has the following objectives to analyze the land use cover and patterns in the Kanpur city with the help of remote sensing (RS), GIS and to access the present status of urbanization with the help of Geo- spatial and conventional data available for the study. III. Database and Methodology Current study is mainly based on secondary source of information. Different sources of information have been used to collect data like census of India, Statistical abstract of the state, websites of the governmental departments, open source GIS, Google, etc. The present study used remote sensing spatial data as well as the non-spatial data. The Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) tools have been applied to find out the residential area of the Kanpur. The satellite data consists of high resolution Cartosat – 1 and LISS–IV data. Topographical sheets and administrative boundary maps have been used to find out the city ward boundaries. To reach at the conclusion various layers of date have been superimposed with the help of geographical information system software (Arc-GIS 10 and open source GIS. Visual interpretation technique have been used to interpret the imagery data to bring results. IV. Discussions And Results: Remote sensing and GIS are highly capable in urban studies particularly in urban management and planning. The present study clearly demonstrates the importance and role of GIS based Information System and potentialities of Satellite Remote Sensing in urban studies. Detailed maps prepared using satellite data depicted existing different land uses in Kanpur city.Visual Interpretation of the constructed maps categorized the different land usages includes built-up urban, vacant land, built-up rural, agriculture land, scrub land, www.ijhssi.org 22 | Page A Geographical Review of the Land Use Patterns of Kanpur City, India Quarry\Brick-kilns, water bodies, drain, transportation (road poly, rail poly) and canal etc. Built-up area dominates among the all other categories. Table I and II represent the categorization scenario at glance.Study area, Kanpur MC covers a total area of 260010231 square meters. It is dominated by the Built-up urban area (Table I) that covers its 49.73%. Other features, e.g. vacant land, transportation, built-up rural, agriculture land, scrub land, Quarry\Brick kilns, drain, river\streams, canal, water body covers the rest. A detailed analyses have been curved out below under different sections. Table: 1. Land Use Categories in Kanpur City (Ward Boundaries) Sr. No. LU/LC Features Area in Sq. Meter Area in Percentage 1 Built-up Urban 129319713 49.73 2 Vacant\layout plotting 20911225 8.04 3 Transportation (road, rail) 5950296 2.28 4 Built-up Rural 2650128 1.02 5 Agriculture Land 87570717 33.67 6 Scrub Land 8166926 3.14 7 Quarry\Brick kilns 19678 0.008 8 Drain 869523 0.33 9 River\ Stream 794464 0.31 10 Canal 737108 0.28 11 Water Bodies 3020453 1.16 Total 260010231 100.00 Source: Satellite Images Built-up Area: Urban The built-up area is a good indicator to access the present