Use and land cover change detection on Arjan lake Fars province, during 1987-2004

Change detection is the process of identifying differences in the state of an object or phenomenon by observing it at different times that can play is an important role in regional planning.This study is an integration of remote sensing data and Geographic Information System in order to detecting changes of land use and land cover around the Arjan Lake in Fars province from 1987 to 2004. After geometric and atmospheric corrections We classified satellite images in four categories zone water, land farming, shrubbery and bare lands using maximum likelihood algorithm and compared the output images using post- classification method which lead to calculating rates of changes. Results showed when ever lake water decreases in a period of time, bare and shrub lands increase, which corresponds the dryness of the lake. Comparing water Arjan Lake area during a period of 17 years indicates total decrease of 6.5 square kilometers for the water mass of the lake. The overall accuracy and kappa coefficient was calculated for the output data showed all data are classified with high accuracy.