Exploring the Dynamics of Urban Sprawl Using GIS & RS Techniques and By Modeling Using Ca-Markov Model in District Peshawar

Urban Sprawl is described by the unplanned and uneven growth pattern in the built-up areas, determined by several processes and leading to ineffective resource utilization. Pakistan, a developing country, is struggling with extreme population growth and currently ranks fifth globally in terms of population size. Peshawar, the provincial capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, has undergone significant urbanization in recent decades for various reasons, necessitating a comprehensive analysis to inform urban planning. In the present work the urban sprawl of the Peshawar district has been studied from 2010-2020, and future predictions for the year 2030 are evaluated. This research uniquely utilizes the CA-Markov model to predict urban sprawl for the year 2030, a method not previously applied in the earlier studies in the study area. This research is carried out to examine the land use pattern, to find out the urban sprawl from 2010 to 2020 using remotely sensed satellite data for three periods (2010, 2015 and 2020). The object-Based Image Analysis (OBIA) approach was used to examine the land use patterns. The LULC prediction till 2030 is done by using the CA-Markov Model in a GIS environment. The pattern of development of urban sprawl in Peshawar is typical of most Pakistani major cities, where ribbon sprawl is common along major roads, while leapfrog sprawl is dominant in the city’s outer edge. The LULC changes derived from the OBIA method show that urban area expanded from 23% to 39% of the whole area, while agriculture decreased from 44% to 35% over ten years. To grip land use changes better, the paper proposes a method for the simulation of spatial patterns. The simulating method can be divided into two parts: one is a quantitative forecast by using the Markov model and the other is simulating the spatial pattern changes by using the CA model. The above two models construct the simulative model of the spatial pattern of land use. CA–Markov is used to simulate the spatial pattern of land use in Peshawar for 2030, which indicates that the urban land will reach a total of 44% consuming areas from Barren Land and Vegetation land