Coastal desert land use monitoring using change vector analysis technique during 2001 to 2014(Case study: Qeshm Island)

Monitoring the land use and land cover change detection is one of the most important issues in the field of planning and management. Change Vector Analysis technique is one of the common methods to detect the changes. This method is based on radiometric changes between two time series satellite data and threshold level method. For this purpose, the satellite images of Landsat ETM (2001) and OLI (2014) were used for the Qeshm Island. The FLAASH method was used to perform atmospheric correction. Then, the vegetation indices (NDVI¡ WAVI¡ RVI, SAVI æ BI) were calculated and the correlation between indices was evaluated. The results showed that the SAVI index with a correlation coefficient of 95% in 2014 and 92% in 2001 had a high correlation with BI index; therefore, the SAVI index provides better results in studying the vegetation changes in arid and semi-arid regions. The results also showed that during the study period (2001-2014), 150 km² of the lands around and between the mangrove forests were submerged, and at the same time, the area of mangrove forests decreased to 30.63 km², mostly occurring in the margins of Qeshm mangrove forests and the eastern shores of Khamir Port. As well, the area of agricultural lands and vegetation of the island decreased about 8.2 km² in central, eastern, and southeastern island.