Land Change Detection and Identification of Effective Factors on Forest Land Use Changes: Application of Land Change Modeler and Multiple Linear Regression

Abstract

Reducing forest covered areas and changing it to pasture, agricultural, urban and rural areas is performed every year that it makes great damages in natural resources in a wide range. In order to identify the effective factors on reducing the forest cover area, the multiple regression was used from 1995 to 2015 in the Mazandaran forests. A multiple regression perfectly enables to explain the relationship between reducing the forest area (dependent variable) and its influencing factors (independent variables). In this study, Landsat TM data of 1995 and Landsat ETM⁺ data of 2015 were analyzed and classified to investigate the changes in forest area. The images were classified in two classes of forest and non-forest areas and also forest map with spatial variables of physiography and human were analyzed by regression equation. Detection satellite images showed that during the studied period there was found a reduction of forest areas up to approximately 257331 ha. The results of regression analysis indicated that the linear combination of income per capita, rain and temperature with determined coefficient 0.4 as independent variables were capable to estimating the reduction of forest area. The results of this study can be used as an efficient tool for managing and improving forests regarding to physiographical and human characteristics.