Application of kernel density estimation (kde) for identifying spatial pattern of road density and its impact on landscape fragmentation in Visakhapatnam City, Andhra Pradesh, India

Increasing density of population is enforcing tremendous pressure on urban sectors. These urban centers are highly populous and cluster settlement by the centralized regional planning process in India. This work has been emphasis on road network and road density study urban area of Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. Increase of urban density along with road network is effective important factors which as directly linked to the ecological disruption under roads build-up area.The major objective to the study of identified the road density measuring through the Kernel density formula using. The Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) has applied on road network analysis which is followed by the OSM data in Arc GIS software. This Kernel density measuring for road network density per sq. m in Visakhapatnam city. The estimation the patch density and landscape fragmentation due to urbanization expansion by FRAGMENTED software. The results indicate that areas with higher road densities characterized by greater proportion of urbanized land along with a lower presence of agricultural along with forested areas. This result reflects vice versa condition of these considered components. The result indicates that the road networks have divided the landscape into smaller sections, creating numerous patches. The spearman rank correlation model also demonstrated a positive relationship between road density (measured in meters per square meter) and landscape fragmentation across the entire area of Visakhapatnam city. Within this KDE, the city of Visakhapatnam exhibits a distinct spatial distribution of road density, allowing for accurate prediction of the road's impact on landscape fragmentation.