Abstract:
Bhopal district has been developing at a very fast pace with most of the developmental activities
being concentrated in the Bhopal city and along its periphery mostly comprising of the urban-rural
fringe areas. This has resulted in considerable changes in the land use in the city and its fringes, with
substantial areas being converted to semi-pervious and impervious zones owing to the fast pace of
urbanization. These drastic changes in the land use pattern, has to a large extent changed the
hydrology and drainage aspects of the city. Owing to the changes in the land use and pressures of
increasing population, the runoff and drainage aspects have also been altered to some extent.
Nowadays it is very common to find large stretches of roads being submerged during small rainfall
events, thereby causing hardships to the local population. An effort has therefore been made to
identify the land use changes in the city and its surroundings and its possible impacts on the
hydrology of the study area. The land use classification has been carried out for 1992, 2000 and 2014
using LANDSAT data with a resolution of 30 m. The changes in the land use/land cover categories
were derived for three different time periods by spatial intersection of land use maps pertaining to
1992 & 2000, 2000 & 2014 and 1992 & 2014 using ERDAS Imagine 2011 and ArcInfo/ArcMap 10
software. The area under settlements has increased by 10.66% during the period between 1992 and
2014, whereas the area under wastelands decreased by 18.29% during the same period. However, the
forested area initially decreased from 45.64 sq. km (1992) to 40.24 sq. km (2000) but subsequently
increased to 48.62 sq. km in 2014. The Soil Conservation Service-Curve Number (SCS-CN) method
has been used to compute the surface runoff. The change in the runoff pattern has not been substantial
in commensuration to these changes in the land use pattern as the runoff generation mechanism is also
dominantly dependent on the rainfall pattern and its distribution and the antecedent moisture condition
apart from the curve number.
