Abstract

Evaluating trend of land cover changes for accessing to correct and timely information from the various terrestrial phenomenon is the basis of different planning. Remote sensing technology is known as suitable tool for studying of changes of terrestrial phenomenon. The purpose of this study is the investigation of land cover changes trend in Damghan. The Landsat TM satellite images for 1986 and 2011 and the lands cover digital map are used. Using of Land cover maps, 6 units (forest, pasture, agriculture, barren, salt-marsh and earth-city) have been detected in this region. After doing the geometric and radiometric correction on satellite images, changes of units have detected by using of Tessledcap transformation, supervised classification via maximum likelihood method and processing after classification for 25 years. For estimating of accuracy, obtained Overall accuracy and Kappa coefficient (0/9) are acceptable in each image. The results  shows that extent of the earth-city, agriculture and barren lands have increased and the extent of the forest, pastures and salt-marsh have decreased during these years. The highest increase is in the earth-city unit about 9/59 percent and the highest reduction is in the forest cover about 16/48 percent. In with due attention to obtained results, the most of changes related to decreasing of forest by converting of forest to pasture and increasing of earth-city by converting of pasture to earth-city.