Investigating the changes in the forests of Namin city and predicting its future trends

The aim of the present study is to analyze land use changes in Namin County, with a particular focus on assessing forest cover changes over a 30-year period. In this study, to examine the trend of forest changes, satellite images from the years 1991, 2000, 2010, and 2022 were classified, using the object-oriented nearest neighbor algorithm, into five categories: agriculture, forest, residential, rangeland, and water. Following the analysis, the land use changes from 1991 to 2022 were quantified, using the change detection method. Additionally, the future land use map for the year 2035 was modeled using the Markov and CA-Markov methods. The evaluation of land use maps indicates that in 1991, the areas of rangeland, agricultural, residential, and forest land use were 777, 122, 6, and 50 square kilometers, respectively. By 2022, rangeland use had decreased to 752 square kilometers, forest land use had decreased by 34 square kilometers, and residential land use had increased by 44 square kilometers. The results of the Markov and CA-Markov model predictions suggest that by 2035, the areas of rangeland cover will be 650 square kilometers, agricultural land use will be 250 square kilometers, forest land use will be 28 square kilometers, and residential areas will be 50 square kilometers. Overall, the findings indicate that, given the increasing population and uncontrolled construction, rangeland and forest cover areas will decrease, while agricultural and residential land use will increase over the next 13 years.