The sustainability of green spaces in any mega city like Karachi is indispensible for ecological stability. Pace of urban growth in Karachi is very fast and this city is continued to be at the risk of various environmental challenges. The abrupt land use changes and green cover depletion is one of the core issue for urban environment. Cultivated land is an important asset for the urban dwellers but unfortunately it is deteriorating at the pretext of improvement in the infrastructure facilities. The negative anthropogenic and environmental components are big challenge for managing ecological balance of Karachi. In this study state of art techniques of Geoinformatics utilized to monitor and map periodic changes of land use in SITE Town Karachi from (1992-2015) with special focus on the biomass depletion in Gutter Bagheecha during (2001-2015). Field survey was also conducted for ground truthing and collection of primary data. Comparative analysis were based on Satellite imageries of Landsat -7 and 8 TM 30 m and QuickBird 61 cm resolutions. Results revealed gross degradation in biomass in one of the ecologically rich land-used in Karachi during past 15 years. GIS technology proved very promissing for monitoring the variations of land resources such as loss of green cover or biomass due to urban expansion. Therefore, this study should be beneficial for agriculturists, Urban ecologist and town planners.
Lubna Ghazal, Salman Zubair, Jamil. H. Kazmi, Hameeda Ghani. (2018) ASSESSMENT OF TRANSFORMATION OF URBAN GREEN SPACES AND AGRICULTURE LAND IN KARACHI: A CASE STUDY OF GUTTER BAGHEECHA IN AND ITS SURROUNDING AREAS, , Volume 15, Issue 3.
