Investigating and Analyzing Effective Factors on the Physical Landscape Change of Villages in Metropolitan Areas (Case Study: Northern villages of Mashhad Metropolitan)

Investigation and studying the villages and their physical and visual developments illustrates the involvement of various factors that are sometimes at the discretion of the villagers and others. These factors target the villages in different ways. Landscape change is one of these factors. The purpose of this study was to identify the most important factors affecting the physical landscape change in the suburbs of Mashhad metropolis. The research method is a descriptive-analytical and applied one. The statistical population of the study consisted of 13 villages located 5 km north of Mashhad which were determined by GIS software and based on study and sample size. The research tool is a researcher-made questionnaire that includes two groups of internal and external factors as independent variables of research and the indicators of landscape variables as dependent variables. The results of the questionnaire analysis among 228 inhabitants of the study villages show that the landscape and physical landscape changes in most of the studied villages were above average and the most landscape changes were found in Rural Face Change Index. According to the results of Pearson correlation, it was found that there is a significant and direct relationship between internal and external factors with 0.482 and 0.555, respectively. The results of the structural model showed that the variables of national and transnational forces externally with the coefficient of 0. 312 had the greatest impact on the change of physical landscape.