Spatial Analysis of Aeolian landforms by Fractal Theory (Case study: Ardestan Rig)

Natural sciences face to a great revolution, nowadays. Now, scientists think the world as a collection of complex systems which prediction of consequences of this complex systems is so difficult. In this situation the systems have rotational act so irregularly lead to regular and regularly lead to irregular. In the meantime, geomorphic landforms have special shapes, sizes and special aspects, and the spatial arrangement of these shapes to each other can be determined by many influence factors in their formation. Since the landforms behavior are nonlinear in nature, it can be analyzed using statistical methods which Fractal geometric is is one of them. The theory, attempts to use its equations to represent the complexity by mathematical way. The purpose of this study is fractal analysis of aeolian landforms of Ardestan Rig. For this purpose, we used Cartosat images of 2008 and 2011, and for fractal analysis, we divided typical aeolian landforms of study area into four categories ; longitudinal sand dunes, cross sand dunes, barkhans and planted sand dunes. To determine the fractal dimension, we used Box counting method. Results show that the geometric patterns of landforms have fractal characteristics so it can be analyzed for different years. The dimension of fractal as a main index, show that planted sand dunes that have a most extent, have a great dimension because it don’t changed during the study period, and indicating the stabilization of sand dunes. The maximum rate of change belongs to longitudinal and cross sand dunes that their extent is decreasing and this has been shown to reduce the fractal dimension and its implementation. In general, the result of fractal analysis matches with realities of aeolian landforms.