Urban Sprawl and Its Impacts on the Agricultural Land in Mardan, Pakistan

The present study uses remote sensing and GIS for tracing the spatial growth of Mardan and assessing the impact of urban sprawl on transformation of arable land to built environment. The study area is a part of productive and fertile land of Peshawar valley. The analysis was carried out using Landsat 30m for the year 1990 and SPOT 2.5m for 2010. The images were interpreted with supervised Maximum Likelihood Classification Technique in Arc GIS 9.3. Supervised Maximum Likelihood Classification in Arc GIS 9.3 provided three major categories of land uses including built environment, agricultural land and cultivable wasteland. The data was supplemented and checked with data obtained from Land Revenue Department, Mardan and ground truthing. The analysis shows that the built environment in the city doubled from 30 percent in 1990 to over 63 percent in 2010 mainly at the expense of food basket land. The growth in built up area, without planning, has resulted in tremendous urban sprawl with harmful environmental and social consequences.