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Rapid urban development and increasing land use changes due to increasing population and economic growth in selected landscapes is being witnessed of late in India and other developing countries. The measurement and monitoring of these land use changes are crucial to understand land use cover dynamics over different spatial and temporal time scales for effective land management. Today, with rapid urbanization and industrialization, there is increasing pressure on land, water and environment, particularly in the big metropolitan cities. Urban sprawl may be defined as the scattering of new development on isolated tracts, separated from other areas by vacant land (Ottensmann, 1977). It is also often described as leapfrog development (Gordon and Richardson, 1977) as observed in all the major cities across the world. Urban sprawl has been criticized for inefficient use of land resources and energy and large scale encroachment onto the agricultural lands. There are many problems associated with fragmented conversion of agricultural land into urban use. The cities are expanding in all directions resulting in large-scale urban sprawl and changes in urban land use.

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Kethoori Venkatesh Department of Geography Osmaniya University Hydrabad

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