AN ASSESSMENT OF LAND COVER CHANGES AND ASSOCIATED URBANIZATION IMPACTS ON AIR QUALITY IN NAWABSHAH, PAKISTAN: A REMOTE SENSING PERSPECTIVE

In recent years, urban development has expanded rapidly in Nawabshah City of Pakistan. A major effect associated with this population trend is transformation of the landscape from natural cover types to increasingly impervious urban land. The core objective of this study are to provide time-series information to define and measure the urban land cover changes of Nawabshah, Pakistan between the years 1992 and 2002, and to examine related urbanization impacts on air quality of the study area. Two multi-temporal Landsat images acquired in 1992 and 2002 together with standard topographical maps to measure land cover changes were used in this study. The image processing and data manipulation were conducted using algorithms supplied with the ERDAS Imagine software. An unsupervised classification approach, which uses a minimum spectral distance to assign pixels to clusters, was used with the overall accuracy ranging from 84 percent to 92 percent. Land cover statistics demonstrate that during the study period (1992-2002) extensive transformation of barren and vegetated lands into urban land have taken place in Nawabshah City. Results revealed that land cover changes due to urbanization has not only contaminated the air quality of the study area but also raised the health concerns for the local residents.