RESEARCH ARTICLE Impact of Rapid Urbanization on the City of Bhubaneswar, India D. Swain 1 • G. J. Roberts 2 • J. Dash 2 • K. Lekshmi 1,3 • V. Vinoj 1 • S. Tripathy 1,4 Received: 25 June 2017 / Revised: 5 August 2017 / Accepted: 11 August 2017 Ó The National Academy of Sciences, India 2017 Abstract Rapid and unplanned urbanization of cities has been a cause of great concern world over. Increased urbanization has immensely altered the Land Use pattern of several Indian cities, thereby altering the physical proper- ties of the land surface. The pronounced effect of urban heat island (UHI) apart from the acute stress on limited natural resources are consequences of this rapid urbaniza- tion. UHI effect manifests as unexpected rise in city tem- peratures when compared to their surrounding areas, thus making them unfriendly for habitation over time. The present work analyses the effect of UHI on Bhubaneswar, an Indian city undergoing rapid urbanization in recent times, utilizing land use and land cover (LULC) change data from Landsat over a 25 km radius about the city and MODIS land surface temperatures (LST) at 1 km 2 spatial resolution for a period of 15 years (2000–2014). From the study, significant changes in LULC through over-ex- ploitation of natural resources and the related spatio-tem- poral variations in LST has been identified as one major factor responsible for changes in the UHI effect over Bhubaneswar. Owing to rapid urbanization (83% increase in 15 years), the city has undergone major changes in LULC aggregating to a massive * 89% decrease in dense vegetation and * 83% decrease in crop fields over this time period. Analyses of the changes in the urban energy balance and resulting UHI effect across many such Indian cities undergoing rapid urban growth is quite essential for mitigating the negative impacts of urbanization for a long- term sustainability. Keywords Urbanization Á Urban heat islands Á Land surface temperature Á Land use and land cover change Á MODIS Á Landsat 1 Introduction In the present day, more than half of the world’s population is known to reside in urban areas with the percentage increasing very rapidly, thus leading to rapid urbanization [1, 2]. Increased urbanization is known to result in removal of natural vegetation cover thereby altering the physical properties of surface including spectral albedo, heat capacity, soil moisture and emissivity [3, 4]. Further, urbanization has also led to pollution and generation of waste heat leading to changes in the urban heat balance thus affecting its microclimate. Microclimate can be defined as the climate of a small area such as a cave, city (urban area), or valley that may be different from that in the general region with its own unique climate [5, 6]. The urban areas tend to have a localized and distinct set of climatic characteristics resulting from the inadvertent cli- mate modification on a relatively small scale. The micro- climate thus varies significantly within cities and at neighbourhood scales depending on numerous factors associated with urban form like winds, temperature, heat balance, clouds, precipitation, pollution, soil types, & D. Swain dswain@iitbbs.ac.in 1 School of Earth, Ocean and Climate Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar, Jatni 752050, India 2 Geography and Environment, University of Southampton, Southampton SO171BJ, UK 3 Present Address: Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati 781039, India 4 Present Address: Department of Geology and Geophysics, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302, India 123 Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., India, Sect. A Phys. Sci. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40010-017-0453-7