Urban sprawl pattern recognition using remote sensing and GIS - Case study Shiraz city, Iran

In this research with respect to increasing role of Geoinformation sciences in environmental studies and the importance of sustainable development in urban planning, Shiraz city as the most important city in the southern part of Iran was selected for urban growth studies and the estimation of natural resources destruction during past three decades. For this purpose different satellite images of the study area since 1976 to 2005, and population censuses of Shiraz city in this time period were used. Four main land use types such as water, constructed areas, vegetation and bareland areas were classified from satellite images of Shiraz city. Then land use coverage for different dates of the classified maps have been measured and with respect to population, the built-up and vegetation per capita also calculated. The results of this study showed that in despite of general belief, in recent years the vegetation coverage has not decreased extremely but it was not grown correspondingly to urban growth. It is recommended that the future planning will be more focused on protection of available vegetation and compensation of destroyed coverage.