Population survey and land cover patterns in Isfahan metropolitan area

The rapid growth of the urban population and its increasing concentration in metropolitan areas is one of the most obvious developments in the settlements of contemporary Iran. Spatio-temporal population movements have led to complex changes in land cover patterns. This article aims to investigate and analyze the spatial-temporal changes in the urban population and the resulting land cover patterns in the last few decades in the metropolitan area of Isfahan. The research method in this research is descriptive-analytical, and by using the analysis of census data and statistics of urban blocks, as well as the method of classification of Landsat satellite images, it has been done. The findings of the research show that during recent decades, the absolute increase of the urban population has reached the area of 35 km to the area of 25 km of Isfahan city. The results show that the spatial-temporal movement of the urban population in the Isfahan metropolitan area is in the stage of centralization and extensive development. According to the spatio-temporal movement of the urban population, the land cover pattern has also undergone extensive changes. The most important pattern of urban growth resulting from demographic changes in the metropolitan area of Isfahan indicates that the semi-centralized pattern of this region in the 1981s turned into a centralized pattern and was pushed in the 2011s.