Landscape characteristics and land use/land cover patterns of a watershed are important factors that can affect water quality of adjacent aquatic systems within a watershed. Therefore, quantifying landscape composition and con?guration and its changes are essential for monitoring and assessment of ecological consequences of human interference. This study focuses on the effects of land use, landscape patterns and landscape dynamics (changes in landscape patterns through time) on the water quality of Zayandehroud River, which is the most important river in center of Iran. Dramatic population growth in addition to industrial and agricultural development around the river over the past decades, have resulted in the rapidly increasing water demand and pollutions, which severely degrading Zayanderoud water quality. Therefore, monitoring Zayandehroud water quality is a critical issue, especially noticing that freshwater is a scare resource in the central region of Iran. The main goal of this study was to characterize the land use change in Zayandehroud river basin in a period of eleven years ( 1997–2008) and to examine how landscape patterns (including Number of Patches, Edge Density, Percentage of land use, CONTAG, Shannon and Simpson's Diversity Index) influence on the water quality indices (including BOD, COD , EC, NO 3 , P and TDS ) measured in 10 stations along the Zayandehroud river in Ghale shahrokh, Tanzimi Dam, Zamankhan bridge, Kalle bridge, Dizicheh, lenj, Mousiyan, Choum bridge, Ziyar bridge and Varzaneh. Water quality data were retrieved from existing databases. Land use and land-cover maps of the area were prepared using hybrid ETM) images taken in September 1997 and 2008. Eight align=left Keywords: Land Use/Land Cover Change, Landscape Pattern, Landscape Metrics, Water Quality, Pollution, Watershed, Zayandehroud River
