Comprehensive programming on land-use planning in urban basin using GIS

Land-use planning is a branch of science which determines the optimal use of land based on the ecologic properties and socio-economic conditions. In most parts of the country, deciding on the land-use and its management has been done with no attention paid to the land’s capabilities which has led to wasting investments and environmental capacities. In this research, land-use management and preparing the land-use planning maps using the special abilities of GIS environments in Mahidasht basin -1380 kilometer squared- was conducted. Employing the existing functions in GIS, the mean sea level maps, the slope percent map, geographic aspects, soil map and vegetation density were dually integrated and at last 577 ecological units were mapped as the task units for assessing the landuse management and utility in the scale of 1:150000. Meanwhile, the climatological prosperities, the soil erosion probability and the type of land-use for every unit have been registered. For such ecological units or wisdom ecosystems, the ecologic power for agricultural, range, forest, aquaculture, tourism and urban expansion were assessed. The land-use planning map for Mahidasht basin was created after investigating the land-use planning and prioritizing the different land-use types based on the qualitative and comparative manner. Comparing the present and future land-use maps revealed that the forest area has expanded to 12% of the optimal land-use comparing the 7% of the present condition. The same analysis for rangeland land-use shows the growth from 12% to 15, and for irrigated farming from 10% to 60%. The Future Ecological Power maps reveal the areas that need to be protected (2% of the total basin), therefore it demands more attention.