Effect of Land Use Changes on Desertification Using Remote Sensing In Daryacheh Namak Area

Land surface changes accurate and timely detection provides a basis to better understand the relationships and interactions between human and natural phenomena for appropriate management and optimal use of resources. Trend of environmental issues such as land degradation, ecosystem potential reduction and desertification can be realized by monitoring land use changes in temporal intervals. The current study is aimed to monitor land use changes of Daryacheh Namak area to recognize desertification in a 36 year period using Landsat satellite data, remote sensing and GIS techniques. The results of land use changes monitoring shows that Kavir-e-Namak land use area had little changes and has increased about 5.26 km2. The area of salty and bare lands has increased (457.13 km2), rangeland area decreased (380.3km2), sand dune area decreased completely linear (194.57 km2), and finally the area of agricultural land has increased (118.35 km2). Final results showed that satellite images are of unique potential in extracting land uses. It also became clear that Landsat satellite imagery with a spatial resolution of 10 meters have the required ability of land use maps extraction in the regional scale.