GIS and Remote Sensing Application for Monitoring the Shrinking of Urban Green Space in Pabna Municipality

Abstract

Urban green spaces are open spaces in urban areas that are primarily covered by 
vegetation which can be public or private. This study is an attempt to dynamically 
monitor green spaces in Pabna Municipality of Bangladesh in last 20 years. Both 
primary and secondary data were acquired to document the spatio–temporal dynamics 
of green spaces in the study area. Focus group discussion (FGD) has been done to collect 
primary data for this study. Secondary data has been collected from Landsat 5 TM 
images for 1997, 2007, 2017 and supervised classification is done for analysis. This study 
reveals that green spaces of Pabna Municipality area (3087. 27 ha) are rapidly decreasing 
over the years and in last twenty years, about 187 ha of urban green space has been lost 
with a rate of 9.36 ha per year. Population, urban growth rate and built up area are 
significant factors for the reduction of green spaces. To promote environment friendly 
planned and sustainable development of a municipality, appropriate measures should 
be taken to preserve green spaces in the municipal areas in Bangladesh.