A quantitative approach to land use planning using GIS – a case study of Chabahar County, Iran

Land use planning aims to formulate activities, administer potential changes and prevent incompatible changes. The aim of this studyis to prepare a land use plan for Chabahar County, Iran, based on a quantitative model using GIS. This study involves two main stages.First, the overlaying of geographical maps and preparing ecological capability maps of different land uses, like forestry, agriculture, rangemanagement, environmental conservation, ecotourism and development of villages, urban areas and industry using GIS. The second stageinvolves prioritizing the land uses taking into consideration the ecological and socio-economic characteristics of the study area and using aquantitative model. The results indicate that the proposed model provides better land use planning than Iran’s Makhdoom model. The newmodel provides clearer and more suitable uses for the land than those used currently. The results also indicated that the maximum area ofproposed uses (52.17%) was related to ecotourism, showing this land use had high potential and socio-economic demands in study area.Also, minimum area of proposed uses was related to development.