Future impacts of Urban and Peri-urban agriculture on carbon stock and land surface temperatures in India

Over the last two decades, cities in India have seen significant urban growth accompanied by green cover loss. Recently however, there has been a growing interest in urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) in these urban areas. The extent to which UPA mitigates the effects of urbanization is unclear. The present study aims to quantify the impact of UPA in the cities of Chennai and Bengaluru in India. Past trends of urban growth and green cover depletion are used to predict how urbanized Chennai and Bengaluru will be in the future, using CA Markov techniques on GIS data. A survey was then carried out to understand the general perception and growth trends pertaining to UPA. This survey data was then combined with our land use model to predict the growth of UPA in Chennai and Bengaluru in the future. These ‘future maps’ were then used to quantify the impact of UPA on biomass and land surface temperatures. We find that UPA can play a small, but not insignificant role in augmenting carbon stock and bringing down land surface temperatures and propose that urban development policies consciously include the role of UPA.