Investigation of the Forest and Pasture Cover Changes in Arasbaran Ecosystem during 34 years, Using Remote Sensing Technique

Estimating the extent of changes in forest and rangelands land cover leads to a clear understanding of the growth or decline of these natural areas and planning for effective protection of these national assets. The aim of current study was to reveal the trend of land-use changes in the Dizmar protected area of Arasbaran vegetative area, using MSS sensor of Landsat-5 for 1984, ETM+ sensor of Landsat-7 for 2000 and OLI sensors of Landsat-7 for 2015 and 2019. For this purpose, the images were classified and supervised with artificial neural network algorithms, support vector machine and maximum probability algorithm for three classes of forest, rangeland and other uses (any other land use except forest and rangeland). The results showed that the support vector machine method with higher overall accuracy than the maximum probability methods and artificial neural network has a higher efficiency in classifying forest and rangeland cover classes in the study area. Estimates showed that during 34 years, the forest cover has decreased by 135.53 square kilometers and the rangeland and other land use cover have increased by 103.19 and 32.34 square kilometers. Also, the most type of land use change during the years 1364 to 2019 with 64.15 square kilometers was related to the conversion of forest cover. The results of the present study clearly indicate the encroachment on the forest lands of the region. This in turn highlights the need for technical rehabilitation operations in this vegetation area.