Study on Land Degradation in Kish Island Using Landscape Metrics and Change Detection

Nowadays different kinds of driving forces put pressure on environment. Change in land- use and land- cover is one pressure, which is caused by factors such as human population increase. Our country environment is affected by landscape degradation, vegetation cover change, and change in land- use and land- cover. Land-use change is a complex, dynamic process that links together natural and human systems. It has direct impacts on soil, water, and atmosphere and is thus directly related to many other environmental issues of global importance. The case study here has been investigated in the Kish Island in order to analyze the trends of changes in the landscape. In order to produce land- cover maps and to detect changes over two passed decades, the satellite images of SPOT2,1992(HRV sensor),IKONOS2001(panchromatic) and Land sat 2001 and 2012 ETM+ were applied. The calculated landscape metrics includes metric of class area, largest patch index, number of patches, landscape shape index and interspersion and juxtaposition index. The applied method for imagery classification was the maximum likelihood algorithm. Our finding from landscape metrics analyses reveals that the natural vegetation cover of the Kish Island has been changed generally and man-made land uses shows a great increase. The expansion of road network has led to landscape degradation and the construction of fishing and commercial seaports has totally changed the landscape in coastal zone. The fragmentation of land and coastal zone habitats and the replacement of natural cover with incompatible human land uses are the consequences of unsuitable development. The findings of this research urge that proper attention should be paid to land utilization and on alleviation of environmental destruction in study area.