Assessment of Temporal Changes in Land use Pattern over the Kinfra-Vizhinjam Stretch in Thiruvananthapuram City

Abstract

Metropolitanization is one of the main causes behind the transformations of the coastal segments of Kerala, where new urban settlements have evolved during last decades. Depending on the monetary and administrative roles, various cities speedily changed to territorial junctions. Urbanization causes land use/land cover changes which can lead to deeper social, economic and environmental changes. Remote sensing technology has great potential for acquisition of detailed and accurate land use information for management and planning of urban regions. Our study area was located between 80 22’ 45’’ North latitude to 760 59’ 29’’ East longitude (Vizhinjam) and 120 6’ 77’’ North latitude to 750 24’ 38’’ East longitude (Kinfra). The main objective of the study was to assess the temporal changes in the landscape spatial pattern to define the growth trends in the area and moreover, to evolve a land use map constructed according to the unsupervised classification technique.