Urban development activities and shrinkage of green vegetation cover: a study based on Kalmunai municipal council

Abstract

The rapid population growth is one of the major environmental issues in the world. It pressurizes the resource and increase the demand for resource as well over last three decades in Sri Lanka. The population growth has resulted in ramifications and one of them is the urbanization. Indeed urban development activities cause threat to the availability of natural resources particularly to the shrinkage of green vegetation cover. In this content Kalmunai, being urban area in the Ampara district, also experiences such problems when proceeding the urban development activities. Therefore this study was conducted to find the current situation of green land cover of research area and to identify the development activities which affected the green vegetation cover. For this study, both primary and secondary data were used, questionnaire, interview and field observation were the tools through which secondary data were gathered statistics from land use planning department, Municipal council, DS divisions, UDA, Google earth historical image, published & unpublished research article were used. Especially Google earth imageries were used to find the periodical change of the green system as conclusion of this study many challenges were identified and remedial measures were suggested to get over those challenges.