Land Use/Land Cover Changes in Samian Watershed, Ardabil, and its Relationship with the Quality of Surface Water Resources

Land use/land cover (LULC) change, strongly affects surface water characteristics, especially in urban watersheds. The aim of this study was to determine LULC in the Samian Watershed and assessing its relationship with water quality parameters. In this study, LULC maps was obtained by ENVI software in four periods (1992 to 2016). Then, 9 water quality parameters at five river gauge stations were selected for further analysis. The Mann-Kendall test was performed to examine the trends in water quality parameters and Pearson test was used to assess the correlation between quality parameters and land uses. According to the results, rangeland decreased by 9.75%, irrigated agriculture increased by 8.45%, residential increased by 1.42% and rainfed agriculture increased by 3.29% compared to the first period. Average of TDS and EC in the study periods in Samian and Gilandeh stations, has been increased. The correlation analysis using Pearson test between quality data and LULC also shows that the EC, Ca, Cl, SO4, Mg and Na pameters of had a significant relationship with increasing residential, irrigated and rainfed land uses.