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• Urban dynamics and urban sprawl in hill stations of India: a case study of Shillong city

  1-10

  F Phibawanlang Kharpran

  Subrata Purkayastha

  Views:

  364

  The hill stations of India are remnants of colonial past built by the British where the scenic landscape and climate similar to Britain attracted the British to set up cantonments and sanatoriums for the British troops and their families. Shillong City whose origin dates back to the 19^th century, was the British capital of Assam Province, the administrative seat of undivided Assam after India’s Independence and at present the capital of Meghalaya. The city’s growth resulted from the continuous influx of population to fulfil the changing socio-economic and political dynamics of the city.  This hill station was built by the British with a vision to house a population of less than one lakh. It was then a cluster of a few scattered hamlets, which at present has grown tremendously with 12 contiguous urban units forming the Shillong Urban Agglomeration (SUA). With the help of RS -GIS using Shannon entropy technique as a landscape metric, the urban sprawl of Shillong has been measured from the year 1991 to 2001.The rapid growth has led to an urban sprawl which poses various challenges to the city’s environment.

• Trend analysis of temperature over the Meghalaya Plateau: A case study of Ri Bhoi District

  63-76

  Andy T.G Lyngdoh

  Subrata Purkayastha

  Views:

  230

  Climate change is a reality in the present world, and most nations are fighting this menace by bringing in mitigation measures to check our carbon footprint and developing measures to make ourselves more resilient to hazards associated with climate change and global warming. These necessities measure the nature and degree of change in the climatic elements, viz., temperature, rainfall, etc. Located on the northern slopes of the Meghalaya plateau, the Ri Bhoi district is characterized by a complex climatic condition owing to its altitudinal differences. The district is divided into two distinct zones: the Highland zone, located closer to Shillong, and the Lowland zone, lying closer to the Brahmaputra plains. The economy of Ri Bhoi district is agrarian in nature, where most of the rural populations live close to nature, following subsistence agriculture with fewer technological innovations; hence, awareness of temperature changes becomes essential for carrying out their livelihoods. In this context, the present paper attempts to analyze both the minimum and maximum average monthly, seasonal, and annual temperatures over two decades (1999–2019) in both zones. The Mann-Kendall (MK) trend test and Sen’s slope estimate were employed to find the nature of the temperature trend and its magnitude in the two zones of Ri Bhoi District. The findings suggest an erratic behavior of both the maximum and minimum temperature has been observed in the Highland and Lowland zones of Ri Bhoi district over the past two decades, impacting agriculture and agro-based livelihoods.