Object-based land-use/land-cover change detection using Landsat imagery: a case study of Ardabil, Namin, and Nir counties in northwest Iran Farnoosh Aslami & Ardavan Ghorbani Received: 27 December 2017 /Accepted: 25 May 2018 # Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract In this study, land-use/land-cover (LULC) change in the Ardabil, Namin, and Nir counties, in the Ardabil province in the northwest of Iran, was detected using an object-based method. Landsat images includ- ing Thematic Mapper (TM), Landsat Enhanced Themat- ic Mapper Plus (ETM + ), and Operational Land Imager (OLI) were used. Preprocessing methods, including geometric and radiometric correction, and topographic normalization were performed. Image processing was conducted according to object-based image analysis using the nearest neighbor algorithm. An accuracy as- sessment was conducted using overall accuracy and Kappa statistics. Results show that maps obtained from images for 1987, 2002, and 2013 had an overall accu- racy of 91.76, 91.06, and 93.00%, and a Kappa coeffi- cient of 0.90, 0.83, and 0.91, respectively. Change de- tection between 1987 and 2013 shows that most of the rangelands (97,156.6 ha) have been converted to dry farming; moreover, residential and other urban land uses have also increased. The largest change in land use has occurred for irrigated farming, rangelands, and dry farming, of which approximately 3539.8, 3086.9, and 2271.9 ha, respectively, have given way to urban land use for each of the studied years. Keywords Remote sensing . Land use/land cover . Change detection . Object-based image analysis . Landsat . Ardabil province Introduction Remote sensing provides a broad view of landscapes and consistent record through time, making it an im- portant tool for monitoring and managing land re- sources (Phinn et al. 2002). Change detection is the process of identifying differences in the state of an object or phenomenon by observing it at different times (Coppin et al. 2004). Accurate change detection of land use/land cover (LULC) has become a key issue for monitoring local, regional, and global environ- ments and resources, providing the foundation for a better understanding of relationships and interactions between humans and natural phenomena in order to improve management and use of resources (Lu et al. 2004). Remote sensing has been used as a powerful tool in change detection applications and provides cost-effective multi-temporal satellite images. Since the early 1970s, these data, along with remote sensing analytical approaches, have been of considerable in- terest for periodic monitoring of large LULC in natu- ral and built environments (Phinn et al. 2002; Griffiths et al. 2010; Jayanth et al. 2016). Considering the importance of remote sensing in evaluating changes Environ Monit Assess (2018) 190:376 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-018-6751-y F. Aslami Department of Natural Geography, Faculty of Humanities, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Ardabil, Iran e-mail: Farnoosh.aslami@yahoo.com A. Ghorbani (*) Department of Natural Resources, Faculty of Agricultural Technology and Natural Resources, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Ardabil 5619911367, Iran e-mail: a_ghorbani@uma.ac.ir