Urban sprawl its impact and assessment on the geoenvironment and ground water regime in the eastern part of Guwahati Assam India

Abstract

Guwahati is one of the fastest growing cities in India. It is the gateway to the entire North Eastern region besides being the most prominent. During the recent years, the population of the city has increased at an exponential rate due to its many fold expansion in regards to settlement as well as industrial growth. This study is aimed at to understand the impact and thereby assess its relation to urban sprawl vis-a-vis geo-environment and ground water regime of a representative part (eastern part) of the city area. For understanding the issue it is necessary to generate primary as well as to collect secondary database on urbanization, terrain condition, geo-environmental problems (soil erosion and landslides) and ground water of the study area. For better understanding of the problem the latest techniques of Remote Sensing and GIS has been utilized to yield better input as well as to suggest proposed mitigation measures for future development of the study area. The various parameters that have been identified for the investigation are population study, urban sprawl pattern evaluation, land use/ land cover, slope, Digital Elevation Model (DEM), geology, geomorphology, soil erosion, landslide and ground water data. The main focus of this study is on the following aspects: 1. To study the urban sprawl. 2. To measure the soil erosion and identify erosion prone zones. 3. To identify landslide prone zones. 4. To study the effect of urbanization on ground water and to identify artifical recharge areas for ground water recharge. 5. To recommend suitable measures to reduce or minimize the effects of the geo-environmental degradation. To achieve the aforesaid goals, Remote Sensing and GIS based technology was attempted to generate spatial and non-spatial database. Both the spatial and non-spatial database in the GIS environment is used for analysis, which helped to arrive at the final output. The base map was prepared using Survey of India toposheet Moreover, other available maps like soil, land use/land cover generated...