Application of Remote Sensing in Assessing Land Use Changes in Haraz Watershed

Aims: Land-use change due to human activities is one of the important issues in regional and development planning. The aim of this study was to detect land-use changes using Landsat TM, ETM+, IRS and ASTER satellite imagery. Methodology: In this quasi-experimental study, land-use changes in the Haraz watershed over a 23-year period were evaluated. For this study, images of 1992 TM, ETM + 2002, and IRS and 2015 ASTER of Landsat satellite were used, and after performing the necessary actions in the preprocessing stage, a supervised classification and change detection map was prepared. Idrisi Andes, ArcGIS, ENVI, Edrisi Andes, and Statistica software were used. Also, to check the significance of the changes, the chi-square test was used in SPSS software. Findings: The overall accuracy and Kappa coefficient were 0.84 and 0.79 for TM, 0.86 and 0.80 for ETM+, and 0.95 and 0.90 for IRS results respectively. The results showed that rangelands, forest, agricultural lands, and water-covered areas had converted to garden regions, building zone, and no vegetation. The results showed that 2.21%, 1.29%, and 7.01% increased in garden regions, building zone and no vegetation and 5.06%, 4.50% and 0.85% decreased in rangelands, forest, and agricultural lands during 23 years, also water-covered areas decreased. Conclusion: The land use classes in the Haraz watershed have changed a lot during the time series 1992-2015. During this period, the area of natural lands (forests and pastures) with a rate of change of about 828 hectares per year and the same amount has been added to the area of the garden and residential lands.