Assessing landscape change of Minab delta morphs before and after dam construction

As special depositional environments which are adjacent to the seas, deltas have provided a field for human habitat establishment. Geomorphic features of deltas are in constant transformation due to their dynamic features. Constructing dams on rivers can intensify these changes and cause either negative or positive consequences. Minab delta in Hormozgan Province of Iran is a round or crescent-shaped delta which has Esteghlal Dam constructed on its creating river. Minab Dam is constructed upstream of Minab Delta in Hormozgan Province. The research aimed to derive landscape metrics of delta and assess their changes before and after the construction of dams. Landsat Satellite images of 1983 and 2013 provided the four classes as abandoned delta, active delta, subaqueous deltaic plain and aquatic environment, using maximum likelihood method, with a Kappa Coefficient accuracy of 86.55 and 88.42 for revealing changes quantitatively. To quantify landscape metrics, percentage of landscape (PLAND), Number of Patch (NP) and Mean Patch Size (MPS) metrics were computed. As indicated by the results, the NP metric increased in all the classes except active delta, and all classes showed a reduction in MPS metric. The amount of NP, Mean Nearest Neighbor (MNN) and Largest Patch Index (LPI) increased to the 22, 19 m and 1.43 percent, respectively, which clearly reveals landscape fragmentation, along with growing NP metric and a reduction in MPS.