ORIGINAL ARTICLE Landscape pattern change in Marakan protected area, Iran Zahra Abdolalizadeh 1 & Ataollah Ebrahimi 2 & Raoof Mostafazadeh 3 Received: 21 September 2018 /Accepted: 21 April 2019 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 Abstract The importance of protected areas (PAs) is mainly to protect biodiversity that is affected by the interactions between climate changes, landscape connectivity, and land use. The objectives are (1) identifying land use/cover classes and their changes occurred in the studied period, (2) quantifying landscape pattern to analyze the diversity, complexity, and fragmentation char- acteristics at class and landscape levels. Land use/cover (LU/LC) changes of the Marakan protected area (MPA), as a biodiversity hotspot in the northwest of Iran, were investigated with post-classification method, and also landscape pattern changes were analyzed using landscape metrics at the class and landscape levels in a time span of 31 years. The most obvious observations were as follows: (1) incremental changes occurred in the area of human-dominated LU/LC types and a tendency for development of merging patches and emerging new patches was detected. (2) Rangelands as the dominant LU/LC types in MPA depicted mainly a trend for conversion into low-quality rangelands, (3) MPA at the landscape level witnessed a decrease in the fragmentation due to decreasing of the patches number specifically in high and low-density rangeland and merging process of patches in human- dominated LU/LC types. The main net changes are considered as negative from the ecological point of view, mainly in high- density rangeland that undoubtedly affects ecosystem process and function. Therefore, the decision makers and planners may consider and manage these undesirable changes on the landscape scale, which can be easily understood by local people. Keywords Land use/cover . Land change modeler . Spatial analysis . Landscape metrics . Fragmentation . Marakan Introduction BDuring the 20th century, protected areas (PAs) became a cornerstone of the global conservation strategy^ (Hansen and DeFries 2007). According to IUCN (2008), a protected area (PA) is Ba clearly defined geographical space, recognized, dedicated and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values.^ PAs, in addition to bring tremendous ecological, scientific benefits to society, they also have a role to play in upholding cultural and spiritual values that, like biodiversity, are at risk from external pressures and threats (Higgins-Zogib 2007). Cultural values, whether positive or negative, fulfill human- kind’ s need to understand and connect in meaningful ways, to the environment of its origin and the rest of nature. Spiritual values those that inspire humans to relate with reverence to the sacredness of nature. However, there are always social and economic costs imposed on local communities whenever a new protected area is established (Harmon 2004). The crea- tion of protected areas alters land use rights in general (Jim and Xu 2003; Roth 2004), specifically the criminalization of native peoples because of their land use practices (Freedman 2002). The importance of PAs is mainly to dedicate and pro- tect biodiversity from threatening processes (Margules and Pressey 2000). There are about 120,000 protected areas in the world that account for 14% of the Earth’s surface Communicated by: Jasper van Vliet * Ataollah Ebrahimi Ataollah.Ebrahimi@sku.ac.ir Zahra Abdolalizadeh abdolalizadeh09@gmail.com Raoof Mostafazadeh raoofmostafazadeh@uma.ac.ir 1 Department of Natural Resources, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Ardabil, Iran 2 Department of Range and Watershed Management, Faculty of Natural Resource and Earth Sciences., Shahrekord University, Shahrekord 8818634141, Iran 3 Department of Natural Resources, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Ardabil, Iran Regional Environmental Change https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-019-01504-9