MEASURING LAND USE CHANGES AND QUANTIFYING URBAN EXPANSION USING REMOTE SENSING AND GIS TECHNIQUES – A CASE STUDY OF QOM

Abstract. Rapid urban sprawl necessitates solid urban planning tactics, which requires assessing and quantifying the sustainable or unsustainable encroachment of urban settings towards the urban periphery. Like many cities in developing countries, Iranian cities have witnessed tremendous changes in recent decades. The process of urbanization following economic and social developments has caused the intractable and unrestrained growth of cities with a national and regional role. Remote sensing and geospatial information system technology give urban planners the appropriate and pertinent information they need to guarantee the sustainable management of urban environments. This study explored the changes in Qom metropolis, Iran during four time periods, from 1985, 2000, 2010, and 2021, and assessed how the city expanded using Shannon's entropy model and the Urban Expansion Intensity Index. In this study, Landsat satellite images from the selected years were employed, and three land use/land cover classification types, including agricultural, built-up, and others, were derived using the maximum likelihood classification approach. The relative Shannon’s entropy result for the study years (1985, 2000, 2010, and 2021) are 0.66, 0.68, 0.69, and 0.86 respectively, which demonstrate a dispersed expansion pattern, with the maximum value in 2021. Also, the Urban Expansion Intensity Index, with the values 0.33, 0.33, and 0.51 for three periods (1985–2000, 2000–2010, 2010–2021), indicates that the city's expansion rate was low-speed throughout the chosen periods, despite having reached its peak between 2010 and 2021.