TITLE:
Study of Urban Sprawl and Its Impact on Vegetation, Land Surface Temperature and Air Pollution Using Remote Sensing and GIS in Kathmandu Valley from 2015 to 2020
AUTHORS:
Ankit Kandel, Kismat Pokhrel
KEYWORDS:
Urban Sprawl, Pollution, Land Use, Landsat Image, Builtup Area
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection,
Vol.12 No.3,
March
21,
2024
ABSTRACT: The Kathmandu Valley has seen substantial urbanization over the past
decades while being the nation’s economic centre. Built-up areas have expanded
quickly along with the population, having a significantly negative influence on the environment. Recently,
Kathmandu was named as the most polluted city in Asia. Urban sprawl has had a
negative influence on Kathmandu’s residents in several ways. The state of urban
sprawl and the effects it has had on the Kathmandu Valley have been examined
using land sat imagery. In this study, IDW was used in GIS to analyze the
pollution status using data of PM 2.5 and PM 10 obtained from various
monitoring sites. A supervised classification was used to create a LULC map of
Kathmandu for the years 2015, 2018, and 2020. To assess the state of the
vegetation and determine whether the Kathmandu Valley is being affected by
urban heat, NDVI and Land sat temperature calculations were also made. The
study’s results were obtained using remote sensing and GIS technology. The
built-up area in Kathmandu Valley has grown by 20% over the past five years,
impacting land use patterns and deteriorating vegetation cover. Due to the rise
of built-up area, which is a good heat absorber, the temperature in the
Kathmandu Valley is rising along with the degradation of the vegetation cover.
The pollution in the Kathmandu Valley is at its worst, and residents are
compelled to breathe air that is significantly more polluted than the
prescribed limit.