Monitoring trend of land use changes and its role on the landscape metrics (A case study: North-east Ahvaz)

The effects of human activities on the land use and landscape and its subsequent effects on the natural environment have always been considered. Therefore, to have a sustainable landscape planning, knowing about such changes would be essential. Satellite images of TM sensor in 1990, ETM+ Sensor in 2002 as well as OLI Landsat 8 in 2013 were used to investigate the trend of changes and preparation of cover maps. The executive phase of the study included the analysis of the gradient of land use structure in eight geographical directions for class area (CA), number of patch (NP), and mean patch size (MPS) in seven classes such as woodland) low-density forest and garden), water zone, agriculture, bare land,  rangeland, urban and sand dunes. The results showed that the land use of woodland, urban, and sand dunes had an increasing trend, while the bare land showed a decreasing trend. The results of gradient analysis of land use structure in eight geographical directions indicated that the most changes were in the west and center of the region. Based on the analysis of changes rate of metrics, the most changes were recorded for rangeland, bare land, and urban during 1990 to 2002; the woodland, agriculture, and urban during 2002 to 2013; and rangeland, woodland and urban during 1990 to 2013. Therefore, given that some aspects of land use change depend on human aspects, the relationship between these quantitative indicators can be used to determine the sustainability level as well as the future trend of land use change to identify the critical affected areas. Metrics of area, number of patches and mean patch size were recognized as the important indices in discussions of monitoring land use and mosaic changes.