Assessing ecological change and analyzing patterns governing the landscape Case study: Varzeghan county

The increase in urban population following migration from villages and sometimes the uneven development of villages and the transformation of villages into cities are problematic factors in the environmental structure of developing countries, resulting in ecological changes, especially the destruction of natural landscapes. And reducing them is in the interest of man-made landscapes and disrupting spatial patterns of natural cover. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the ecological changes and measure the patterns governing the landscapes of Varzeqan city using quantitative and qualitative metrics of land appearance in the years 1363, 1381, 1398. The nature of research is developmental-applied and descriptive-analytical. Data were collected through library studies and field studies to calculate the detection of changes, and to measure the quantitative and qualitative metrics of the landscape. After preparing the land cover maps in ENVI software environment, TerrSet software was used to calculate the detection of changes and quality indicators of the land appearance and Fragstats software was used to calculate quantitative metrics. The results showed that the most changes are related to vegetation classes, especially at low density level and in the second interval, which in addition to reducing the area, also includes increasing the number of spots. And has the largest share in becoming barren and pasture lands. Also, two quantitative metrics of spot number (NE) and landscape percentage (PLand) of quantitative metrics and patch area index and patch compactness (Patch Compactnees) more favorably show the changes and patterns governing the appearance of a land. they give.