Land use change, urbanization, and change in landscape pattern in a metropolitan area

Abstract

This paper analyzes land use change, urbanization and their impact on the change in landscape pattern in Tabriz metropolitan area (TMA) during the time period from 1996 to 2016 in order to provide support sustainable regional planning. For this purpose, land use data obtained from satellite images including Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM), and Operational Land Imager (OLI) sensors for 1996, 2006, and 2016 with 30 × 30 m spatial resolution. This paper first seeks to analyze the changes in land use and urbanization, followed by changes in landscape patterns by using spatial metrics and Landscape Expansion Index (LEI). Then, using two methods of Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR), magnitude and direction of the relationship between land use changes, urbanization, and change in landscape patterns are analyzed. The findings show that most ecological lands such as grasslands have been converted into bare and urban lands over the past two decades. Therefore, in the whole landscape, the expansion of urbanization has led to the prevailing pattern, resulting in increased fragmentation and reduced aggregation. The results also show that changes in landscape patterns have a strong relationship with changes in various land uses. In addition, GWR analysis was used to analyze the impact of urbanization on changes in landscape patterns, indicating that urbanization expansion has different effects with changes in spatial positions, so that in areas adjacent to the built-up lands and the central regions of TMA, with increasing urbanization, we see increasing aggregation in the landscape, but as we move away from the built-up areas, are faced with an increase in fragmentation and heterogeneity, especially in the northeastern, south and southwest areas of TMR.