Monitoring of land use changes and river flow for sustainable management in Esteghlal Minab dam area

Land use planning and sustainable management of natural resources require knowledge of land use changes and their secondary effects on the hydrological regime. The purpose of the present study is to investigate land use changes and river flow using Landsat 8 and IRS digital data in the distance between two hydrometric stations of Rodan Watershed Bridge to Brentin. First, the geometric and atmospheric correction of the images was done in ENVI 5.3, and then land use classification was done for the years 2000 and 2018, and the land use transition matrix was prepared. Mann-Kendall test was used to investigate the discharge changes in 2000-2018 years, at the two mentioned stations, and the results were significant at the 95% level. For spring 0.001 and summer 0.021, the negative trend was significant; while, no significant negative trend was observed for autumn 0.88, winter 0.561 and annual 0.072. According to the results, the change of the hydrological regime and the negative slope of the monthly, seasonal and annual discharge of the upstream station has caused the change of land use in the downstream, and the most land use change is related to mix agricultural-horticultural and garden lands. The lands of mix agricultural-horticultural have decreased from 123.25 to 116.18 and garden lands increased from 4.65 to 14.72 square kilometers. Also, land use change has caused a change in the hydrological regime and a steepening of the negative slope of the monthly, seasonal and annual discharge of the downstream station compared to the upstream station.