Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Reza Dehghani Bidgoli ¹
• Hamidreza Koubanani ²
• Mohammadreza Yazdani ³
• Jamal Dashti Amirabad ⁴

¹ Assistant Professor, Dept of Rangeland and Watershed Management, University of Kashan, Kashan, Iran

² Ph.D Student, Depatment of Desertification, University of Semnan, Iran

³ Associate professor, Depatment of Desertification, University of Semnan, Iran

⁴ Ph.D Student, Department of Desertification, University of Semnan, Iran

Abstract

     The destructive phenomenon of desertification is one of the serious ecological crises in the present day. To improve the efficiency of combating desertification projects and inhibit natural resources destruction, it is necessary to establish a comprehensive and systematic assessment method that uses a variety of criteria and indicators to achieve actual results. Land degradation assessment strategies are generally based on expert opinions and usually evaluation models based on multi-criteria decision-making models are not very noticeable in Iran. In this study, fuzzy logic approach as one of the effective ways to assess some important criteria in the field of destruction and desertification was used. For this purpose, after the preparation of units, field samples were taken in each unit and then, using groundbreaking and kriging methods, the initial continuous lattice maps in the GIS environment were prepared. In the next step, the layers were assigned to the fuzzy layers using the linear functions. Finally, with the use of fuzzy operators and gamma operators, the final map of desertification severity was presented on a scale of zero to one. In order to facilitate better understanding of the results, the final map was classified into four classes of very low to very high severity. The obtained results show that approximately 40% of the studied area is in high severity and 17% is in very high severity. It should be noted that the above classification can be reconsidered in various managerial scenarios.

Keywords

• Ecosystem degradation
• fuzzy logic
• linear membership function
• Miyandehi