Monitoring the Physical landscape changes of Karaj using synoptic analysis and sattelite images

This study is designed to analyze the trend and pattern of the urban growth in Karaj City applying the landscape ecology approach. Accordingly، monitoring changes in land use/ land cover (LULC)، synoptic analysis is conducted. Change detection is conducted applying three TM satellite images taken in 1989، 2001 and 2013 and the post classification comparison method. For implementing synoptic analysis، some composition and configuration-based metrics including Number of Patches، Percentage of Landscape، Largest Patch Index، Landscape Shape Index، Patch Density، Edge Density، Contagion and Shannon’s Diversity were then calculated at two class and landscape levels and their changes were detected. The results indicated that man-made areas increased by 63. 91 % and this degraded 2413 hectares of agriculture land and 658 hectares of green cover during the past 24 years. The results of the synoptic analysis indicated that the landscape has become more fragmented، more complex and irregular in shape، more disconnected in continuity of patches and less diversified in terms of land use/ land cover types at the end of the 1989- 2013 period. In addition، the results revealed that sprawl of the man-made areas has caused an increase in fragmentation، irregularity and complexity of agriculture patches and decrease in total area of agriculture class