Document Type : Research
Authors
1 Postdoctoral Fellow in Geography and Urban Planning, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran.
2 Associate Professor of Geomorphology, Department of Geography, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran.
Abstract
Land use and cover change (LULC) as a key factor has significant impacts on the environment. Access to accurate and up-to-date LULC data from satellite imagery provides a unique opportunity to identify, monitor, and model future changes. This study aimed to investigate urban land use changes in Ahvaz in the past years and predict future changes using the CA–Markov model. In this regard, ENVI, IDRISI TerrSet, and ARC GIS software were used to predict urban land use changes, and Spectrom software with the Demproj method was used to analyze and predict population. The evaluation results confirm the high accuracy of the land use maps of 2006 and 2017 with kappa coefficients of 81.9% and 88.7% and overall accuracy of 93.4% and 96.6%. The land use map for 2030 has also been predicted using the CA–Markov model. The research findings indicate that there are 7092.44 hectares of wasteland in eight districts of Ahvaz city, which can play an important role in preventing the horizontal expansion of the city and guiding development towards dense growth. The lowest amount of wasteland (10.94%) is in District 7 and the highest in District 2. On average, 33.35% of the total areas of Ahvaz are wastelands, which are clearly visible in the urban land use map among built-up areas and urban uses. Analyses using the Markov method to predict urban expansion until 1430 show that these wastelands, in addition to horizontal uses, can contribute to the coverage of the city surface and lead to dense urban growth.
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