Evaluation of land cover changes in Kaftareh watershed using remote sensing technique

Land cover change detection is an effective tool for managing natural resources and evaluating ecosystem changes. The aim of this research is monitoring land cover changes using remotely sensed images and GIS in Kaftareh watershed in Ardabil province.
In this investigation, Landsat 5 TM images for years 1987 and 1998 and Landsat 8 OLI-TIRS images for year 2014 were collected and analyzed. For this purpose, atmospheric and radiometric corrections, the images of every year was classified using maximum likelihood supervised classification method. Then, considering study area features, the images were classified into four land cover classes: dry land, range land, irrigated land, garden land and bare land. Moreover, NDVI index was used to differentiate between range land and bare land. Slope layer was used to distinguish between range land and dry land.
Findings: According to the results, during the period 1987-2014, 68.91 percent of study area haven’t been changed. 1970.68 hectares of range land were destroyed and changed into bare land, dry land and garden land. Moreover, dry land, irrigated and garden land and bare land were increased 26% (1808.20 hectares), 6.97% (43.54 hectares) and 33.99% (100.78 hectares), respectively.
Discussion and Additional information such as slope layer and NDVI index in assistant with supervised classification of satellite images can increase the accuracy of image classification to provide land cover maps.