Prediction of Land Use Changes Using the CA-Markov and LCM Models in the Kozehtopraghi Watershed in the Province of Ardabil

Simulation and monitoring of future trends of land use changes is an important challenge for researchers and decision makers. This study uses the spatio-temporal models to simulate and evaluate the future trend in land use changes of the Kozehtopraghi Watershed in the Province of Ardabil. Landsat ETM+ (2000), TM (2010) and OLI (2018) images were used. The CA-Markov model was used to simulate land use changes in the future period (the year 2036). To assess the validity of a CA-Markov model, the predicted land use map of 2018 was compared with the classified map of 2018. Based on the Kappa accuracy coefficient with the value of 0.8, the accuracy of the simulated results was acceptable. The land use map of 2036 has been predicted using the CA-Markov model. In order to analyze and detect the changes in 2000 to 2036, the LCM model was employed. The results showed that the areas of irrigated farming, pastures and orchards will increase by 80.52, 36.90, and 5.76 percent, respectively. On the other hand, the rainfed agriculture and water bodies areas will decrease by 43.43 and 91.40 percent, respectively. In addition, based on the results of the change process, extreme changes in rainfed agriculture, orchard, pasture and irrigated agriculture will happen in the central, south-west, south-west and downstream parts of the Kozehtopraghi Watershed.