Studying Sustainability of Settlements in Mountainous Shirvan

Abstract The economic region of Mountainous Shirvan situated in the eastern part of Azerbaijan with its weak industrial output and low urbanization rate is known to be one of the most lagging parts of the country’s territory. For decades the region experienced continuous out-migration, mostly from rural settlements toward Greater Baku area. With highlighting this overall underdevelopment and related vulnerability, the presented research comparatively explores how out-migrations induced by environmental, climate-induced and socioeconomic problems had an impact on sustainable demographic development of settlements in Mountainous Shirvan in the last few decades. Moreover, this research explores the current geographical distribution features of settlements by the region’s four rural districts – Shamakhy, Agsu, Ismayilli, and Gobustan. Upon the comparative analysis of the data of population censuses we found that over fifty settlements have experienced depopulation in Mountainous Shirvan in 2009–2019 years, a process of concern in demographic sustainability terms. The analysis of recent demographic trends and the current situation shows that over fifty settlements with smaller or extremely smaller population size found in the studied region are in danger of disappearing in the near future. To study the characteristics of the distribution of settlements in the territory, influenced by various geographical and environmental factors and economic activities that are very crucial in sustainability perspective, the aerospace images were addressed. Based on this, GIS mapping of the studied territory in ArcMap 10.8 program was conducted through using overlay tools and geostatistical analysis. This included the interpolation analysis of the relief, the development of the land use map, the digital elevation and the LS-models for the studied region. The mapping allowed identify twenty-three rural agglomerations in the territory of Mountainous Shirvan.