Abstract

Unmanaged land use change is one of the major challenges of natural resources in the 21st ‎century. The arid and semi-arid watersheds in Iran are faced with this problem, as well. This ‎work analyzes the size and intensity of land use changes and the stationary at three levels of ‎time, category and transition intensity in the Kardeh dam watershed, northeastern Iran. With ‎the field investigations and the existing land use maps, the study area was classified into the ‎five categories, including rangeland, irrigated farming and orchards, rainfed farming, ‎bareland‏ ‏and residentia ‏‎. The intensity analysis was done based on a mathematical ‎method that compared the observed intervals. A cross-tabulation matrix was created for ‎each time interval (1987-1998, 1998-2008, 2008-2016) and the intensity of changes was ‎examined at the three levels of time interval, category intensity, and transition intensity. ‎The largest amount of land use change is occurred in the first time period (1987-1998), ‎however, the intensity of the changes in the last time period (2008-2016) includes the ‎highest amount. Intense and unprincipled changes of rangelands to irrigated and rainfed ‎farming has led to an increased intensity of bareland changes. The results illustrate that the ‎most changes and fluctuations are among the rangeland, irrigated and rainfed farming ‎categories without a regular pattern. Rangeland is the only dormant category for both gains ‎and losses, in spite of being involved in most of the changes‎‎‎‎‎‎‎.