Monitoring Land cover/Land use changes in Coastal Zone of Khuzestan Plain

Over the past few decades, the structure and cover pattern of land in the Khuzestan coastal zone has also not been immune to such changes. Therefore, monitoring the spatial combination and arrangement of Land cover/Land use and its changes in order to identify the current threats and opportunities is considered essential. The aim of this research is to monitor or the trend of changes in landscape mosaic in the coastal regions of Khuzestan Plain in response to the growth and development of human activities. In this research, Landsat images were used across two time 2000 (Landsat 7 ETM+) and 2015 (Landsat OLI) for extracting Land cover/Land use map. In order to monitor the trend of changes, four metrics of land appearance MNND, MPS, PLAND, and NP have been used. The obtained results indicated that the spatial combination and arrangement of the landscape in the studied region have found greater heterogeneity and complexity with fragmentation, attrition, and patches. Further, with the addition of two types of use including sugar cane cultivation and industry as well as fish farming basins along with the development of industrial construction units have caused dramatic transformations in the land structure in terms of combination, continuity, and extension of valuable ecological patterns. Riparian forests with increase in the number of patches and 50% reduction in the PLAND metrics and wetlands with increase of 58% of NP metrics and 71% in MMND metrics in these regions with the maximum level of fragmentation are the most vulnerable environmental patterns.