Landscape pattern change in Marakan protected area, Iran

Abstract

The importance of protected areas (PAs) is mainly to protect biodiversity that is affected by the interactions between climate changes, landscape connectivity, and land use. The objectives are (1) identifying land use/cover classes and their changes occurred in the studied period, (2) quantifying landscape pattern to analyze the diversity, complexity, and fragmentation characteristics at class and landscape levels. Land use/cover (LU/LC) changes of the Marakan protected area (MPA), as a biodiversity hotspot in the northwest of Iran, were investigated with post-classification method, and also landscape pattern changes were analyzed using landscape metrics at the class and landscape levels in a time span of 31 years. The most obvious observations were as follows: (1) incremental changes occurred in the area of human-dominated LU/LC types and a tendency for development of merging patches and emerging new patches was detected. (2) Rangelands as the dominant LU/LC types in MPA depicted mainly a trend for conversion into low-quality rangelands, (3) MPA at the landscape level witnessed a decrease in the fragmentation due to decreasing of the patches number specifically in high and low-density rangeland and merging process of patches in human-dominated LU/LC types. The main net changes are considered as negative from the ecological point of view, mainly in high-density rangeland that undoubtedly affects ecosystem process and function. Therefore, the decision makers and planners may consider and manage these undesirable changes on the landscape scale, which can be easily understood by local people.