On The Study of the Land Use Changes with Emphasis on Population Growth between 2001 to 2016 (The Case Study: Rasht City, Guilan Province)

The earth is a limited and nonrenewable natural resource that is affected by the pressures of population growth. For optimal use of this limited resource, awareness of land use and its changes is essential. These changes have the desired and unfavorable effects on rural settlements, which are generally divided into three categories of legal, economic and demographic factors, demographic factors are the most important factor in land use change and overlap the other two factors.This study examines the land use changes of Rasht city and the impact of demographic changes on it in a 15-year period. The method used in this study is descriptive-analytic, and data collection method is documentation-field study. The ENVI software, Arc GIS software and SPSS software were used for satellite image processing, drawing maps and data analysis, respectively to find out the land use changes from the Landsat satellite images. The results show that with the passage of time, construction and agriculture have been added to human applications, and arid, forest and water applications have been reduced.