Investigating and predicting the effects of drought on the changes of Maharlo Lake and its surrounding uses using remote sensing

In recent years, the phenomenon of drought has affected many watersheds in Iran and causes many changes in land use and lake area every year. This research tries to investigate the drought situation and its relationship with land use changes in the Abkhiz basin of Maharlo lake in the south of Iran by using the drought remote sensing indicators in the years 2000, 2010 and 2020. In this way, the drought condition was determined using EVI, NDVI, and VCI indicators, then land use maps for the years 2000 and 2020 were prepared using Landsat ETM+8 satellite imagery. In the following, using the regression method, the most important effective drought indicators for land uses were determined. Also, using Markov and Komarkov chains, the state of drought and land use indicators for 2040 was predicted. According to the results of the indicators, it was found that the southern parts are more at risk of drought than other parts. The results of the survey of land use changes showed that in 2020, compared to 2000, more lands were placed in the salty and barren classes. The results showed that according to the regression method, the most important indicators in relation to land use is the NDVI index. The results of Markov and Komarkov chain for predicting indicators showed that this method has acceptable accuracy. Thus, the Kappa coefficient for the VCI index is 0.98, which indicates the high accuracy of the model in predicting drought. Also, the maps predicted by this method showed that in 2040, the values of this index will decrease, which will indicate more drought in the region.