An Investigation of the Factors Affecting Land Use Changing of Agricultural Lands (Case Study: Rural Areas of Rasht Town- Iran)

Document Type : علمی

Author

• Zhila Kalali Moghaddam

Payam Noor University

10.22067/jrrp.v4i9.33738

Abstract

Purpose: Now a day uncontrolled land use changing is one of the major challenges in agricultural section in Iran. Hence a big part of agricultural lands turned out of production cycle. Rasht County as one of prepared agricultural areas of Iran faces the same challenges. The main objective of this investigation was to recognize effective factors affecting land use changing in that area and to propose some proper solutions.
Methodology: The study method was analytical and descriptive method which analyzed economic, social, and natural variables as effective factors on land use changing. In this study, 50 villages out of 294 ones in Rasht township which were located in both highlands and lowlands and experienced the largest land use changing during last decade were chosen on the basis of cluster sampling method. In every village some families were selected randomly on the basis of Morgan table hence 150 families were summarizing total population.
Findings: Rasht Township has begun in recent years, especially from 1990. According to the satellite data, from 2003 to 2013, 35042 hectares of agricultural lands which were of the most prepared agricultural lands, and also 4832 hectares of forests and pastures have been changed. Effective factors on land use changing reviewed by economic variables framework (such as expensive agricultural inputs, low market price of agricultural productions, etc.), natural (such as topography, physical and biological degradation of soil, etc.) were analyzed. According to the results, the land use changing problem in this township is mostly affected by economic factors therefore when we recognized these factors we can provide suitable solutions.
Research Limitation: The most important limitation in this study was the lack of detailed information and statistics of the amount of land use changing have done by the governmental organizations in Rasht County.
Practical implications: No overall study of agricultural and forests land use changing in Rasht township was conducted using satellite data and analyzing effective factors like this study during recent decades.
Original/Value: Innovation of this paper is that in recent decades by processing satellite images in two time periods and as well as analysis of the factors affecting the agricultural and forest land in the city of Rasht, comprehensive research has been done

Keywords

• land use
• Agriculture
• Village
• Rasht County

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