Using a New method in the Terrain Landscape Classification of Iran

Part of the studies of geomorphology is dedicated to the automated, semi-automated identification, segmentation and classification of landscapes and landforms at different scales. Each of the landscape classification systems, includes a number of smaller units or landforms. Some methods have been used to identify and recognize Landforms, while others have been dedicated to the landscape classifications. Landscape classification is applicable in a wide range of geomorphological studies such as, mapping geomorphological maps, zonation and environmental potential in the field of ecotourism, environmental exploitation and sustainable development, and also in the field of economic geography, natural hazard assessment and arranging the land use planning documents of the country and many other fields which is directly and indirectly applicable. In this study, an attempt has been made to present a new system in the landscape classification which be able to recognize and classify, landscapes of the terrain surface using, digital elevation models considering the ease and simplicity of the procedures. For this purpose, tangential, plan and profile curvature and slope extracted from digital elevation model, these three curvature combined together to get mean curvature and these factors including elevation, slope and mean curvature used to classify landscapes of the terrain. In the next step, each of the three components of the above-mentioned was divided into two parts based on 5 methods of thresholding, including: geometrical interval, quantile, natural breaks, standard deviation and weighted average. Finally, all three components have been coded and named with a special system and the area of the Iran, was classified into 8 landscapes units and the results were presented as a color map