Investigating land use changes with an emphasis on forest cover and its effects on soil erosion using object-oriented classification and the MARCOS multi-criteria technique case study: Ghaleroodkhan Fuman watershed

Monitoring of land use changes and destruction of vegetation as one of the dominant parameters in soil erosion is one of the important issues for assessment and control in natural resource management. The Hyrcanian forests of Gilan province, over the past years, have deteriorated due to neglect and have taken on a different face. So; The purpose of this research is to reveal the changes in land use and the destruction of forest cover and its effects on soil erosion in the watershed of Ghaleroodkhan Fuman. For this purpose, the changes in land use that took place between 1371 and 1402 were extracted using Landsat images and object-oriented classification techniques and were classified (agriculture, forest, pasture, water, and residential). In the next step, by identifying the effective factors in the erosion of the area and preparing the information layers of each criterion in GIS, the standardization of the layers was done using the fuzzy membership function, the weighting of the criteria using the CRITIC method and the final modeling was done using the MARCOS multi-criteria analysis method. The study of the changes in watershed use shows that the forest cover in 1992, with an area of 222.17 square kilometers, had the largest area among the land uses, and in 2023, its area decreased to 205.03 square kilometers. Also considering the results; Residential use with an increase of 27.17 square kilometers has changed the most during the 30 years of study. According to the erosion zoning map, respectively; The area of the floor with very high and high erosion potential has increased from 18.04 and 31.05 percent in 1992 to 22.52 and 32.34 percent in 2023. According to the obtained results, it is possible to reduce the forest cover and convert it into residential areas, agricultural lands, and pastures, as well; He considered the conversion of agricultural lands to residential areas and the increase of residential and agricultural use in the boundaries and riverbeds as the most important factors involved in increasing the soil erosion potential of the basin.