Monitoring and Modeling the Urban Growth of Mid-size Cities in Iran by Markov Model: the Case Study of Zanjan City

Rapid land use change has taken place in many mid-sized cities of Iran such as Zanjan over the past three decades. This research analyzed the land use/cover change Zanjan from 1965 to 2005; identified the patterns of urban growth and the fragmentation of the urban space by applying GIS and remote sensing tools. The main driving forces of the urban changes were analyzed and the model to predict the land use/cover changes was applied. Our results show the importance of monitoring and modeling of rapid urban growth for attaining sustainable mid-sized cities in developing countries that are strongly dependent on export of natural resources. The results indicated that there had been a notable and uneven urban growth and a major loss of cropland loss between 1965 and 2005. Most of the urban growth and loss of agriculture land occurred in inner and outer suburbs. This research analyzed the land use/cover change Zanjan from 1965 to 2005, identified the patterns of urban growth and the fragmentation of the urban space, applying GIS and remote sensing tools. We believe that in urban growth modeling process there has been multi socialeconomical and physical elements in which have key rules in it, and we attempted to use some of them.