Investigating recent land use changes of Qazvin's traditional orchards by using MSI sensor

The traditional orchards surrounding the city of Qazvin, as a cultural and social heritage, play a vital role in the city's environmental and economic sustainability. Land use changes could affect the energy and water balance of urban and non-urban areas. Destroying traditional orchards could lead to environmental problems such as increased flood intensity and heat-trapping in urban areas. The orchards also act as artificial reservoirs for the Qazvin Plain aquifer, contributing to the sustainability of the groundwater level. Given the significance of the orchard’s ecosystem for Qazvin, it is essential to examine the trend of changes in land use and its area. This study estimated the orchards' area using supervised classification of random forest and MSI sensor images, comparing the trend of changes from 2016 to 2022. Also, a temporal series of accessible images have been processed for two scenarios. In the first scenario, the total orchards' area was estimated without considering tree density, but the second scenario investigated the active area of orchards concerning tree density. The average of the total area and active area of orchards were found to be 2613 and 2203 hectares, respectively. The results demonstrated that about 15.7% of the orchards, equivalent to 410 hectares, either lost trees or had very low tree density, indicating a need for more attention to maintain the environmental balance of the region