Spatiotemporal Land Use Changes in Remote Rural Regions of India Between 2000 and 2020

Abstract

This study tracks the spatiotemporal changes in high-population growth and high-density rural regions of India, also called ‘urural’. The urural areas are remote, high-density rural areas far from zones of urban influence. Deriving the land use and land cover changes from the Global Land Cover and Land Use Change dataset and analysing them in the most populated and dense districts, the study confirms the hypothesis that land uses are continuously changing and have accelerated in high population growth and density in rural districts in India. The findings demonstrate significant changes in land use patterns in the last two decades, that is, 2000–2020, particularly in the last decade. Almost all physical changes, such as an increase in built-up areas, a reduction in agricultural lands, and depletion in vegetative cover and water bodies, were significant. This means that high population density, combined with population pressure in remote rural regions, is a leading contributing factor to considerable land use transformations, essentially turning them into areas with urban characteristics, that is, making them urural.