Modeling and Predicting Land Use Changes in Lahijan City With a sustainable development approach

In recent years, the lands of Iranian cities, especially the outskirts lands of cities, have been transformed into built-up lands due to the urbanization process and citizens' need for housing. As many other Iranian cities, Lahijan has been significant changes and transformations in terms of land uses due to increase of construction. The purpose of this study is to model and predict land-use changes by using of land change modeler (LCM) and CA- Markov. The research methodology in terms of purpose is applied and from the aspect of nature and method is Descriptive-analytical research. In this regard, Landsat satellite images for the four time periods of 1989, 2000, 2010 and 2018 have been used. The Images were classified by the maximum probability method after preprocessing operations. Then, LCM and CA-MARKOV models in order to identify and predict land-use changes in Lahijan was used. The results indicate that the area of land-built from 1989 to 2018 has increased approximately 1250 hectares, also Forest lands and gardens declined about 2000 hectares during this period. Therefore, according to comparing the classifications and results of the LCM model, it was found that the most changes in this period are related to forests and gardens. Finally, land-use changes are predicted for 2030 with the Markov chain model. So, based on the results of the prediction of changes, it is probably that in 2030, forest land and gardens will be reduced about 760/5 hectares. On the other hand, 51/91, 693/09 and 13/5 hectares will be added to the built-up lands, paddy fields and waterfront zones, respectively. Thus, as a result, the studies show that the growth of areas in the study area has not been proportional and this has caused a widespread phenomenon in Lahijan.