Markov chains

In recent decades, cities of Iran have undergone remarkable changes, as in many third world cities, so that growth of urbanization following economic and social changes has led to the unrestrained growth of cities and towns with national and regional role, which in most cities of the country, despite of inappropriate policies of construction and utilization of urban land. Therefore, evaluating its results is essential in future planning of cities. In current study, land use changes and physical expansion around Marand city during the years 1999 to 2016, and then predicted these changes by 2026 with using of Markov chain model. For this purpose, satellite images of Landsat TM, 1999, 2005, 2011 and 2016 have been analyzed. The results show that during this time, built-up land has increased significantly, with about 36% of the changes, and in process of land increasing, land classes of unused land and gardens respectively have played huge function and these are changes chiefly due to an increase in the number of immigrants from settlements around the city of Marand to this city.  Moreover, after 10 years, the greatest changes will be made in unused land (26.75%), which will become more to land built, then garden lands (19.52%) will be the largest change toward land built. Indeed, according to results, built up lands have the highest stability and in comparison, unused and garden lands will have low sustainability.