Land use planning and landscape ecology in Iran: Past experiences and the way ahead

Land use planning has a history of nearly 50 years in Iran and is being completed for all the 31 provinces of the country under the supervision of Management and Planning Organization of Iran. Of the provinces, around 10 have already submitted their final results. The land use planning employed in Iran has benefited from different schools of thought originated in various countries. As such, in spite of standard tables of references and contents, there are differences in the end results from provinces. Another important issue is the compatibility of land use planning results with those of landscape ecology studies. In other words, regardless of the underpinning school of thought adopted in the land use planning, researchers should now focus on the ways to reconcile the results from both disciplines. Otherwise, huge recent efforts by the landscape ecologists in Iran will find no place for practical inclusion in land use planning decisions. Hence, an effort is made in this paper to elucidate the commonalities and differences among some of the land use planning approaches to shed light on the possible ways of enriching land use planning results with those of landscape ecology analyses.

Keywords:

Land evaluation and Land use planning , Landscape ecology , Commonalities , Schools of thought