Investigation of land use changes in Givi Chay catchment and its effect on erosion using RS and GIS

Changes in land cover and land use affect many natural processes such as soil erosion and sediment production and the physical and chemical properties of the soil. The purpose of this study is to investigate the trend of land use change in Givi Chay catchment area and also its effect on soil erosion using WLC algorithm. For the present study, Landsat satellite images for 1985 (TM) and 2020 (OLI) were used and the land use map was prepared using the object-oriented method. The results of detection of changes showed that the highest rate of increase is for irrigated cultivation, which has increased by 17.89% compared to 1985. The highest rate of change is for low density pastures, which has decreased by 13.02%. According to the erosion zoning map of 1985, 27.76 and 13.06%, and according to the erosion zoning of 2020, 24.98 and 16.39% of the Givi Chay catchment area in two high-risk floors and very risky, so that these classes are also in both time periods in residential use, rainfed cultivation and medium rangeland.