Asian Journal of Geographical Research

This work focuses on land use land and cover (LULC) change and the growth of the urban area surrounding Bankura municipality during a 30-year period (1991–2021). The objectives include determining directional urban growth and quantifying land use and land cover (LULC) transformations. Satellite images from 1991, 2001, 2013, and 2021 have been used for land use change detection and to analyse urban expansion. For land use classification mapping, the Maximum Likelihood Classifier tools of ArcGIS 10.8 have been used and prepared supervised maps of different land classes (water body, bare land, built-up, vegetation, agricultural land and sand). Accuracy assessment is checked by overall accuracy and the Kappa coefficient. The study results indicate significant positive change of built-up area, vegetation and agricultural land and drastic negative change of bare land. Urbanisation, population growth, migration, economic growth, location and accessibility are the main causes of land use changes. The urban expansion of the study area, about 518 hectares in 2021, was found in the North-Northwest direction of the study area. The lowest built-up area has been observed in the South-South-West direction, and the area is about 20 hectares. The highest expansion of about 313 hectares was observed in the NNE direction from 2013 to 2021. For the purpose to achieve balanced regional growth, the study emphasizes the rapid urban transformation and suggests sustainable land-use planning and ongoing GIS monitoring.