Assessment of Land Use Changes in GhareGheshlagh Wetland Using Remote Sensing

GharehGheshlagh wetland is one of the most important wetlands in Iran in terms of having a variety of plant and animal species especially birds. In recent years, agricultural development and land use change in this region has reduced water areas of this wetland. The present research was conducted due to the necessity of the assessment of the variations occurred during last years and forecasting the future status of this unique ecosystem in order to make decisions about the land use management. For this purpose, Landsat 8 satellite images were used as a reliable tool to investigate the trend of changes. In this regard, the images provided in three different years were classified to cover two periods of 12-year and 15-year using Support Vector Machine and Random Forest models. Then, considering the existence of land uses including barren landscapes, saline fields, water areas, and also vegetation and agriculture in the region of GharehGheshlagh wetland, their changes were evaluated. The results represented the immethodical development in agriculture area over a 15-year period from 2001 to 2015. The land use changes had a negative impact on the wetland water areas and it had caused remarkable reduction in the water level of the wetland, which necessitates for agricultural management and prevention of its future development in the region of the wetland can be mentioned as the most important result of the present study.