Investigation of Destruction of Popoulus euphratica Oliv. Forests along the Karun River in a 20-Year Period Using Landsat Satellite Images

The Popoulus euphratica Oliv. is one of the most important trees in warm and arid regions due to its tolerance to high temperature and soil salinity. It is widely distributed in the Khuzestan province as a pasture on the banks of the Great Khuzestan Rivers, and is important in terms of support (preserving the river side walls and wildlife sanctuary) as well as producing timber and providing forage. In this study we analyzed changes trend and the land use change in Popoulus euphratica Oliv. city from a series of satellite images of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Operational Land Imager (OLI) data (1998, 2018) respectively were used to produce classified land use/cover map. Different landscape metrics of class area, largest patch index, number of patches, Patch Density and mean patch size were used to quantify landscape patterns. The images were classified by the most Maximum Likelihood. The number of patches of paddy and gazelle groves increased from 520 in 1998 to 1131 in 2018, and the density of patches during the 20-year period rose from 0.5343% to 1.1621%. The results show that with decreasing the habitat size of the Popoulus euphratica Oliv. fragmentation, density per unit area increased. Therefore, the results indicate that there is a growing trend of destruction of Popoulus euphratica Oliv. in the region.