Investigation of the process of land use change in Mahidasht plain watershed using Remote Sensing images

In this study, to the investigation of land use change trend in Mahidasht plain watershed, first, land uses of land in the region were provided by satellite imagery and user map of past years, and then was calculated the percentage of changes in the level of each application. Satellite images taken from Landsat 8,7 and 5 satellites and for three time periods (1987, 2000, 2016), which were provided by international references. All map corrections were performed in ENVI 5.3 and ARC GIS 10.2 software. The results of this study showed that in the first period of the study (1987), the largest area of land use was for Rain fed land with an area of 1558.63 Km2 and the smallest area was the Residential area with an area of 15.77 Km2. Also in the second period (1987-2000), the largest area of land use was for Rain fed land with an area of 1465.74 Km2 and the smallest area belonged to residential land with an area of 19.44 Km2.Whereas in the third period (2000-2016), the largest area of land use was Irrigated lands with an area of 1054.60 Km2, and then the uncoated lands with an area of 1050.62 km2 and the smallest area related to Residential land with area 22.51 Km2. During the period from 2000 to 2016, the largest change was observed in Rain fed lands to Irrigated lands, and the area of uncoated lands and Residential lands also increased significantly.