Investigation of land use changes in Zarrineh Rud catchment and its effect on soil erosion using WLC model

Today, the preparation of land use maps using remote sensing data is one of the most important methods for producing land use maps and land use assessment together. Lack of proper infrastructure, non-observance of land development capability in selecting land uses and its unprincipled management leads to the phenomenon of soil erosion. The purpose of this study is to prepare land use maps using object-oriented method and to prepare soil zoning maps of Zarrineh Rud catchment for 2000 and 2018 Landsat satellite using WLC method. The results showed the detection of changes from object-oriented classification The highest rate of change in rainfed and irrigated agricultural land uses has been faced with the largest increase in area in the region. The trend of changes in barren land uses, rich and medium rangeland, has been decreasing over time, so that the area has decreased by 14.04, 10.66 and 5.73 percent, respectively. Man-made use has been increasing almost uniformly over time, which has grown by 2.47% over 18 years. The results obtained from the erosion zoning maps produced in 2000 and 2018 showed that there are two very high-risk and high-risk classes, each covering 15.29 and 27.51 percent of the area. These classes are mostly located in rainfed, irrigated, barren and medium range agricultural uses.