Urbanization Process and Agricultural Landscape Change during 1336-1389 (Case Study: Minoodasht City, Golestan Province)

Urban development often leads to loss of more fertilized agricultural land, and besides the horizontal sprawl of city into agricultural land, causes the changes in the agricultural landscape and land fragmentation of city surrounding. This paper discusses physical changes in the urban fringe agricultural landscape of Minoodasht, during 1336- 1389. The Research method used at this paper is a combination of the historical, analytical and descriptive methods. Dates were collected by field work and library study (aerial photos and satellite images). Data were analyzed by GIS and Excel software. The results show that when the Minoodasht was selected as an urban place, the structures and functions the urban fringe agricultural land changed through the population growth and continuous social and economic processes. The1- Associate professor in Geography and Rural Planning, Kharazmi University.2- Ph.D. Student in Geography and Rural Planning at Shahid Beheshti University.3- M.A. in Geography and Urban Planning.4- M.A. in Geography and Rural Planning.Islamic Azad University-Ahar BranchGeographic Space An Approved Scientific, Research-based Quarterly22 English Abstractsoutcomes of this process, was the changing of agricultural land to urban land use. Increased demand for land as a result of population growth, as well as land speculation, caused the urban fringe agricultural land not being used by the farmers and left as fallow, and then fragmented to land use changes and being sold.