Landscape Design for Suburban Area Using an Ecological Index Based on Remote Sensing Data (Case Study: Suburb of Arak City)

Expansion of cities on the fringes has caused the loss of natural landscapes, agricultural lands and environmental problems. Restoring and improving these effects based on the principles of environmental design is a necessary matter. Considering the current state of development of Arak city on the eastern edge, it is very important to pay attention to this part due to the value of high-quality soil, the existence of rural areas, gardens and agricultural lands. In this paper, a part of the eastern fringe of Arak was studied by satellite data and remote sensing-based ecological Index (RSEI) that includes four sub-indices: built-up area, vegetation cover, land surface temperature and land surface moisture. Integrating them was done by principal component analysis. The results showed that the lower ecological quality in different areas was caused by the development of infrastructures, impervious urban surfaces, industrial lands and in general the spaces resulting from the pressure of human activities and the ecological quality was higher in gardens, active rural agricultural lands and scattered parks and green spaces. Then, the results were analyzed in the pressure-state-response framework, and a part of the land named "Qanat Naseri" was redesigned in order to maintain and expand the existing ecological values based on the results and analysis.