Assessment of land degradation in Garmsar plain using Landsat images

One of the important issues in regional and national planning is information about land use, land use based on their capacity and the discovery of land use change procedure. By knowing the land use change procedure it would be possible to manage the ecosystem toward balance. This study is to investigate the changes in land use and land degradation in Garmsar Plain. In this study the images of Landsat satellite in the year 2002 and 2011 were reviewed. For producing the land use map of Garmsar plain NDVI index was used. Then, using different methods of supervised classification the land cover map were prepared based on satellite images. Land use in the region from 2002 to 2011 has changed and agricultural land in the study area decreased by 2.49% due to the possible expansion of residential areas in western and north western parts and degradation of agricultural lands in southern parts of the study site.