Affiliations: [a] Department of Environmental Science, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Arak University, Arak, Iran | [b] Faculty of Environment, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran | [c] Faculty of Natural Resources & Environment, Islamic Azad University, Tehran Science and Research Branch, Tehran, Iran
Abstract: Caspian basin is one of the main six basins of the country which is influenced by Caspian region in the north of Iran. Because of the growth of human activities and following the changes in land using over the past years, land-cover has changed greatly in this area. The purpose of the article is to study the impact of land-cover changes on the surface of runoff and the quality of water resources in years of 2001-2012, in the Caspian basin. MODIS of terra satellite images have been used to do this action. The results showed that impenetrable surfaces that influence the production of surface runoff have covered 32.25 percentage of the whole of Caspian basin in 2001. And the level of impenetrable surfaces have decreased to 1.39 percentage by reducing 1.86 percentage. Also, in 2002, the surfaces that changed the quality of water, composed 14.54 percentage of the whole of basin land-cover reached to 17.78 percentage by 3.24 growth until 2012. In order to have a constant profit from water resources and to decrease land-cover impacts on water resources in this basin, providing the management plan of land-cover which includes pre-programmed planning, implementation, monitoring, and compliance steps which are related to water resources is necessary.
Keywords: Land cover, water resources, MODIS satellite images, Caspian basin
