Impact Assessment of Sprawling on Lands Use Change of Middle-Sized Cities (Case Study: Qorveh City)

Today, the unplanned and horizontal extension of cities is an important issue for urban planners. This is the result of irregular growth of population on cities’ border and suburbs, as well as human’s developmental actions such as destruction of lands of economic value for construction. As a result of such factors, a city’s breadth undergoes changes, and leads to the unproductive development of city. This study is applied in orientation aiming to assess the phenomenon of sprawling in the development of Qorveh. The method is descriptive-analytical and the tool of gathering data includes documentary and library studies. Data were also collected from organizations and research centers related to the study. In this study, for answering the questions we used different models. At first, for gaining the map of rate of vegetation lands destruction we used Fuzzy Artmap, LCM and Gross Tab table in Idrisi Selva application and Google Earth, also we used CA- Markov for forecasting city’s future development. The results of analysis show change of land status of vegetation areas during 1986- 2016 such that 1165/5 Hectare from vegetation lands have changed to constructed lands. This process gradually causes horizontal spread. Therefore, we can see such an action in connecting the village of Qalee to Qorveh from south part and the expansion of Divzand village toward surrounding lands. While suitable agricultural land is more in this part, according to the obtained forecasts for the year 1410, 126/27 hectares from the vegetation lands will have their use changed to construction land; all of these items are among major reasons of horizontal spread and change of body structure and also environmental problems