Assessing urban growth patterns in Sari using landscape ecology approach

Urban growth has been an important social and economic phenomenon that affects severely on function of ecological systems. Hence، understanding and analyzing the spatial patterns of urban growth using remote sensing، GIS and landscape metrics can play a fundamental role in urban land use management and planning and subsequently reduction in environmental problems and challenges among them. Therefore، in present study we examined urban growth in Sari city and its surrounding. For this purpose، satellite images of 1992، 1998، 2002 and 2009 of the study area was processed to generate land use\ cover maps. Accordingly، different types of urban growth have been quantified using post classification method (map overlay)، applying a set of landscape metrics at class level including PD، MPS، ED، LPI and ENN and developing R metric at patch level applying ArcGIS 9. 3. The results show that، urban development is associated with the growth of old patches in the study area. While the outlying growth type became the dominant pattern، the infilling growth decreased over the entire study period.