Land use / land cover change modelling using Markov chain and Cellular Automata(Case study: Hamedan province)

The extent of spread and source degradation would be determined using prediction of land use/ land cover changes. In this way these changes would be guided in the right directions. The aim of this study is modeling the process of land use / land cover changes of Hamedan province using Landsat TM satellite image of 1989 and IRS LISS III image of 2008.
After running the necessary corrections, land use/ land cover maps of the study area in the past two years were obtained using supervised classification with maximum likelihood algorithm. Then probability matrix of land use transition (to each other) were calculated using Markov chain with respect to land use/ land cover map. In the next step, Cellular Automata method was used to geo specified these changes.
Findings: Finally land use/ land cover map of Hamedan province for 19 years later (2024) was obtained and the area of each land use/ land cover was calculated.
Discussion and Counclusion: The results of this research shows that natural land use/ land covers will be decreased and transmited to human land uses in future. These changes are conceivable due to population growth and increasing human needs to exploit the nature; but this process should be considered to exploit the natural resources in a sustainable manner to avoid severe consequences in future.