Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Reza Bayat ¹
• majid zanjanijam ²
• Majid Soufi ³

¹ Assistant Professor, Soil Conservation and Watershed Management institute, AREEO, Tehran, Iran.

² researcher

³ Associate Professor, Soil Conservation and Watershed Management Research Department, Fars Agricultural and Natural Resources Research and Education Center, Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization (AREEO), Shiraz, Iran

Abstract

Soil erosion causes soil degradation and reduction of its fertility potential. Gully erosion is one of the accelerated phenomena caused by human developmen programs and one of the important factors of soil degradation, which causes soil lost and sediment production in different climates of Iran. Physical condition of each region, morphometric characters of each gully, soil, land use, causes of gully erosion and economic damages were recorded. Based on the information obtained, the prioritization of watershed areas for the implementation of watershed management and soil protection operations based on the proposed method of prioritizing indicators of area, length, width to depth, total damage and damage per surface unit according to a score between 0 for no priority and 9 was given the highest priority. First, the value of each factor was divided by the average value of the factor in the province and in ascending order, a score of 0 for the lowest value of the index and a score of 9 for the highest value was assigned to the region, and the priority of the regions was determined separately based on the scores of each index. Then, the total score of the indicators' priorities was calculated, in ascending order, and the highest score was determined as the first priority and the lowest score was determined as the last priority.Soil of gullies has heavy to semi-heavy texture and land use is natural rangeland mostly. Causes of gully erosion are destruction of rangeland vegetation cover and soil erodibility. Economic damage to rangeland due to gully development was more than 3984 million rials. Result of priority control indexes review showed that Aftab Dar, Durchak and Qostyn‌Rud Regions have high priority of erosion control and Yal‌a-Bad, Dastjerdeh and Moallme‌Kelayeh areas have lower priority.

Keywords

• Economic Damage
• Gully Erosion
• Priority
• Qazvin
• Soil Loss