In order to evaluate the impacts of land use change, the quantification of landscape structure through relevant metrics can be used. These metrics are appropriate owing to the fact that they are measured easily and take low cost and time. The goal of the present study is to investigate the ecological impacts of land use change on the natural structure of the Gharesoo Watershed in order to identify the highly affected areas. Firstly, the amount of land use change between 1984 and 2013 was calculated. Then, landscape metrics were used to investigate the spatial patterns of land use change. Finally, an ecological impact index based on current land use was established. The results showed that during the period studied, areas of forest and agriculture have decreased by 12 and 5 percent respectively, and other uses including residential-industrial, rangeland, and transportations have increased by 292, 143, and 176 percent respectively. Landscape metrics analysis indicated a decrease in compactness and an increase in fragmentation and degradation of the landscape. According to the ecological impact index map, approximately 28 percent of the region is exposed to high and very high impacts. These areas can be used as a base for future studies and may be earmarked for intervention measures such as improving land management and decreasing fragmentation.

The present study uses a structural analysis method to seek out the most likely scenarios for the development of Alborz province on the horizon of 2032. The required data and information for the research have been collected through a territorial development study (Survey Questionnaire) as well as expert interviews within the framework of the Delphi model. The statistical samples of the study were 30 employees of relevant institutions and urban-regional researchers. For data analysis, MICMAC software has been used to analyze the interactions of variables, and Morphol software has been used to compile scenarios. Finally, the results showed that the issue of water resources and drought, and the issue of the destruction of gardens of the province are due to the irregularity of construction. Similarly, the issue of industrial production, environmental pollution increase, and the burnout of factories in the horizon of 2032, with three replications of the catastrophe scenario in the developed scenarios are three serious and major threats for the development of Alborz province up to the horizon of 2032. Nonetheless, the capability of being at the neighborhood of Tehran province and the use of demographic, economic, and other capacities of Tehran province in all three scenarios were identified as the desirable scenarios. Also, in each of the three scenarios, the capabilities of the "big and strategic industries" and "province tourism" were identified as the most intermediate scenarios, which indicates the importance of these three capabilities in the development of the province in the horizon of 2032.

The Zayandeh-Rud Basin, placed in the center of Iran, is one of the areas with water instability problems. In the last decade, the water resources of the basin have decreased. Thus, that part of the length of the river in the middle and downstream of the water flow has dried or temporarily turned off, and the allocation of agricultural water to the agricultural lands of these sectors has decreased significantly. In this study, ground-level land use changes were analyzed through Landsat satellite imagery analysis in 2000, and 2014. These periods coincided with the periods before and after the occurrence of the instability of water resources in the basin. The researchers specified the research area and then divided it into three parts, naming upper, middle, and downstream. At the next step, these parts were compared in the form of 6 categories of use. According to the results, during the period, along with the occurrence of water resource instability, construction and residential land use across the rangelands has increased, and land use of pasture has decreased. Agricultural coverage has increased in the upstream, but it has decreased in the middle and lower parts. Besides, the empty and blank land use on the upstream has decreased, and it has increased in the lower parts. Regarding the results, some of the instability of agricultural water resources in the basin could be attributed to the expansion of settlements, increase in water consumption throughout the area, and increase in agricultural activities in the upstream basin.

Landscape fragmentation is the most important challenge in urban development. This challenge prevents the flow of materials and energy in the region. These changes affect ecological characteristics. In this regard, ecological networks are considered as tools for conservation planning. Therefore, satellite images were used in the years 2006, 2011 and 2017 to evaluate the ecological networks of Karaj Metropolis. The Classification and preparation of land map conducted based on land cover and with the support vector machine algorithm. Landmarks were also used to assess the status quo and the process of changing heterogeneity, continuity, and communication-isolation networks in previous years. The results showed that the trend of criteria changing in the study area is not desirable. The inappropriate process of changing of Space landscape heterogeneity criteria, the conjunction of the same spots across the land, and the optimal communication reduce the ecological function and the consequence is a decline in the sustainability of ecological networks. Also, due to the decreasing trend of metrics in green spots, especially human green, and the increasing trend of metrics in construction and open spots, in sum, it can be concluded that the ecological function and the ecological network characteristics of the landscape are following a descending trend.

One of the new problems is paying attention to environmental planning for sustainable exploitation of land resources and prevention of environmental issues that have been considered by researchers and managers recently. As much as this planning is based on objective facts and potentialities, achieving predetermined goals becomes more feasible. On the other hand, environmental planning tools have tended to achieve local-scale plans to reach more sustainable cities and townships. In this paper, local-scale development planning has investigated in Shandiz district located at Torghabeh-Shandiz city. The planning of the Shandiz district has carried out using the analytical process consisted of three stages of environmental planning and using the Geographic Information System (GIS). The first stage involves understanding the capabilities and potentials of the study area through the study of the current status. Issues, facilities, and constraints associating to each section are categorized and prioritized in the second stage. The third step involves drawing a vision, organizing the general goals, and defining the objectives. Regard to the priority of the studied factors, it was proposed spatial solutions in environmental units. Finally, physical-spatial development plans were developed to guide the regional changes according to the natural and man-made constraints and potentials.

Identifying tourism attractions is a basic requirement in the local and national community toward balanced and harmonious development of land potential. This study aimed to evaluate the tourism attractions of Gharahsoo watershed in Golestan province, northeast of Iran, based on the impact and effectiveness of environmental criteria. After determination of criteria and preparation of layers, criteria analysis was done based on the impacts and effectiveness of the criteria using DEMATEL method. Entropy Shannon method was used for weighting criteria. Finally, the spatial analysis was done by employing the TOPSIS method. The results showed that landform and plant density, in terms of the impact, and access to facilities, in terms of the effectiveness, have priority over the other criteria. Also, the criteria weighting results showed that the criteria access to facilities, landform and plant density with the value 0.229, 0.147 and 0.123 are a priority to the other criteria, respectively. Finally, the results showed that, in terms of tourism attractions, the areas of the southern of Gharahsoo watershed are in suitable conditions and the rest of the area, especially the northern parts, has unsuitable conditions.

Much quantitative research (and some qualitative cases) has been done on the role of small- and medium-sized cities in regional development. The present article is also in this line, but with a slight change in the structure of the breakdown in the approach to the subject and the analysis of the problem, and the multi-faceted analysis of the data using the Fuzzy Inference System. The purpose of this research, with regard to the title, is developmental-applicable and has a descriptive-analytical approach. The FIS application and increasing approach has four stages (in general): its Database and Fuzzification; the rules base; the engine; and the Defuzzification. In the glimpse (Knowledge Base), regional development indicators (10 indicators) and variables (more than 70 variables) in four pillars of regional development (economic, physical, infrastructure and human development) for the small- and middle-sized cities of Kurdistan province (9 cities of the city centers Except for Saravabad) were selected and mapped in 2006 and 2016, and then a detailed analysis of the process was performed on the data. The final result of this paper is that although fluctuations in the development of the inland region of the province have been observed, regional development changes (relying on economic indicators) have been consistent with changes in the urban hierarchy (demographic projections). Thus, with the decline of concentration and concentration in Sanandaj, we see an increase in the role of small- and middle-sized towns in the urban-regional development of the province.

Studies on spatial planning in Iranian history has experienced more than seven decades of programming, But has never been implemented and a firm determination for its operation has not been seen so far. This is an applied and developmental research, descriptive and analytical in method. research and data collection has been made through questionnaires and Delphi techniques. In this study, using cross-impact analysis and cross-impact matrix software to perform complex calculations were performed MICMAC. The results showed ,effective factors on implementation of spatial planning; Tehran province is regional political polarization, Tehran as a development pole in this province and being placed on the west to east and north to south corridors and the necessity of the province interaction with neighbor regions was determined and suitable solutions to overcome barriers in the way of implementing spatial planning in Tehran province, have been suggested in this study.

Land cover always has changed due to human activities and natural phenomena,. Intensive and variety of these changes in urban environments are more than others. The objective of this research was assessment of the temporal and spatial changes for two coastal cities (Chalus and Babolsar) and two non-coastal cities (Ghaemshahr and Amol) in Mazandaran province with the view to compactness, complexity and centrality of urban form using landscape metrics. The research methodology was a quantify method and the land use maps were produced in three classes (urban, cropland and water) by maximum likelihood classificationusing Landsat satellite images. For landscape change analysis 12 landscape metrics were used in the class and landscape level. The results show that the NP for cropland in four cities increased, which represent fragmentation, loss of continuity and interference in cropland. Additionally, increasing trend of number of patches was observed in two cities Ghaemshahr and Babolsar in landscape level that showed fragmented structure in these cities. Also, ENN-MN decreased only for Ghaemshahr that means high centralization was occurred in this city. Generally, the significant difference was not observed between coastal and non-coastal cities with the view to compactness and complexity.

Landscape fragmentation, due to the roads construction, urban infrastructure development and other land uses, seems to be in result of the loss of habitat in protected areas. Indeed, Landscape fragmentation causes a huge negative impact on wildlife, including important species. In result, the monitoring and management of protected areas, through the landscape ecology and quantification of fragmentation, will be so applicable. This research aims to quantify the landscape fragmentation in Kolah Ghazy national Park and wildlife refuge. To achieve this purpose, RS and GIS techniques were used to extract land uses in studied area and then landscape fragmentation was quantified using landscape metrics (CA, CAP, TE, MSI, NP, MPS and MNN) in class level. The results cleared that rich rangeland patches have been more integrated, but the incompatible land uses, such as mining, agriculture and urban infrastructure development make these patches to be more far away from each other, so, reduction of incompatible land uses is recommended in the region.