Investigation of Land Use Change Using Landscape Ecology Approach (Case study: Zagros Dam Basin in Gilan Gharb)

The Zagros Dam watershed in Kermanshah Province is enclosed by the cities of Dalaho, Sarpol Zahab, Islamabad Gharb and Gilan Gharb and has experienced drastic land use changes in the last decade. The aim of the study was to investigate the changes in land use using land surface ecology measures, due to the change in Zagros oak forests and data provision, lack of agricultural land, soil erosion and flooding in the area.

Landsat 8 satellite images from 2010 and 2020 were used in this study. After the necessary image pre-processing, educational patterns were identified using false-colour imagery (FCC) and vegetation index (NDVI). Classification was done using 730 training points from agricultural, forest, pasture and residential areas using Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Maximum Likelihood Theory. Land surface measurements were used at two levels of class and landscape, and the changes that occurred in the landscape were quantified. After calculating the changes using the Markov chain, the potential of changes between different land uses was obtained for the year 2030.

According to the results, the area of agricultural land use in 2010 was 23,933.43 hectares, which increased to 25,344.09 hectares in 2020, indicating the dominance of this land use in the changes that occurred. Forest and pasture land use showed a decreasing trend. Field measurements of the land surface also revealed significant changes in the class level and the landscape. The entropy metric of disorder and disturbance at the boundary of natural land uses such as forest and pasture showed an increasing trend from 2010 to 2020. The measure of the number of patches (NP) and the measure of continuity (CONTAG) showed that the changes that occurred in the area of the Zagros Dam were towards the fragmentation of the landscape and also towards the reduction of its continuity.

The future trend of land use change will be towards the predominance of agricultural land use and the reduction of natural land use, so it is necessary for the relevant executive bodies to have more control over the destruction of natural land at the edge of agricultural land.