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Evaluating rangelands means to identify and create potential and actual rangelands in order to utilize this valuable natural resource properly. Hence, one of the important factors in rangeland management is to determine range suitability and recognize factors affecting it. Weighted Linear Combination Method (WLC) is one of the most common methods u...
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... characteristic of studied area: Bagheran mountain region with an area of 11879 ha and in geographical location of 585'48" to 5911'02" longitude and 3243'14" to 3251'31" latitude is located in the southwest of Birjand in Southern Khorasan Province, Iran (Fig. 1). The mean annual rainfall of area is 188 mm and the mean annual temperature is 13.5C. According to a survey of studies conducted within the scope of Bagheran Birjand area on vegetation generally in the studied area, 138 species from 31 plant families were ...
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... Many types of research have been done in the field of environmental management based on MCDM methods. Recently, the AHP-Fuzzy method was used to evaluate rangeland suitability for livestock grazing in the Bagheran Birjand watershed of Iran (Rouhi-Moghaddam et al., 2017). Two methods of MCDM (AHP and analytic network process) were used to estimate the potential areas of flooding in Kakhk paired catchment in Iran and were compared with each other (Eshghizadeh, 2017). ...
p class="042abstractstekst"> The cultivation of Rhus coriaria has become necessary to preserve their wild populations. To be competitive in the international market, it is important to develop an efficient production chain to reduce costs and improve the quality of the products. The main objective of this study is to provide a method to determine the suitable areas to develop the R. coriaria cultivation with a case study in Gonabad County of Iran. A habitat suitability model (HSM) was applied to survey the distribution of R. coriaria and to identify the best areas the growing of its. Three different main criteria including environmental suitability, agronomic suitability, and social-economical suitability selected for the HSM. Then, each of the three main criteria and their multi-specific indicator was defined in Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the weights of them were calculated by pairwise comparison matrix. In the next stage, the weights are applied to their layers such as hypsometry, slope, slope aspect, mean annual precipitation, mean annual temperature, soil texture, landuse, water resource type, water resource quality and quantity, road network, and land ownership as roaster layers. The results of the HSM showed a weighted map of land suitability for the R. coriaria that included the maximum and minimum potential of areas for its planting. Based on these results, the areas with the highest suitability for the R. coriaria are strictly associated with precipitation, soil texture, and water resources type. </p
It is important to determine the suitability of rangelands for the utilization of medicinal plants. The purpose of this study was to introduce some of the criteria and indicators, influencing the rangelands suitability for medicinal plants exploitation and to investigate the differences between the results of using different approaches of suitability determination. To this end, the suitability of the Arshad Chaman rangeland was evaluated in terms of the utilization of medicinal plants. The results showed that according to the limiting factor method (a common method of determining the suitability of rangelands), 2, 6 and 77 percent of rangelands had respectively good, moderate and low suitability and 15 percent were not suitable for utilization. The mathematical method (using hierarchical analysis process) showed 4, 26, and 45 percent of the rangelands as good, moderate, and low suitability, respectively, and 25 percent as inappropriate for exploitation. The application of the theoretical method (MSMPE) also showed that 39 and 61 percent of the rangelands had respectively good and moderate suitability. In general, it was observed that there were no significant differences between the classes of suitability obtained by the limiting factor and the mathematical methods; however, there was a difference between the classes obtained by the limiting factor and MSMPE methods, and different classes of suitability were obtained for a given area of rangeland in these three methods. Therefore, it is recommended to test the accuracy of the findings of the present study to achieve a practical result in different years in terms of climatic events and other locations with different physical properties. Overall, based on the combined results of different approaches and in terms of physical and environmental constraints, the study area had low suitability for the exploitation of medicinal plants. Therefore, to reduce the livestock pressure on rangelands and increase the diversity of medicinal plants, more attention should be paid to the other aspects of rangeland use such as beekeeping and free tourism.
The aim of this study was to investigate the canopy cover and seed production of medicinal-economic Sumac (Rhus coriaria) seeds and locating susceptible areas of Sumac in rangelands of Khakriz village, Bilesavar County, Ardabil province. For this purpose, three sites (a total of 60 hectares) with Sumac cover and in each site three transects were parallel and perpendicular to the direction of the slope with intervals of 100 meters, were established. Along each transect used 10 plots of five square meters with 20-meter intervals using a random-systematic sampling (a total of 90 plots) and the position of each plot was recorded using GPS. Sumac seeds in each plot were harvested by clipping and weighted method. Maps of environmental factors (elevation, slope, aspect, annual precipitation, and temperature) created using digital elevation models (DEM) in ArcGIS and then values of each environmental factor extracted for each Sumac site and the questionnaire of ratings were completed in this regard. Then, to determine the areas susceptible to cultivating Sumac in the Khakriz rangelands, the analytic network process (ANP) method, was used. The results showed that the areas with Sumac cover had 657.88 kg/ha seed production and 263.12 kg/ha of powdered seed production. The results of ANP indicated that 157.12 hectares of the area were very suitable, 138.10 hectares were suitable, 110.60 hectares were medium, 46.01 hectares were poor and 46.17 hectares were unsuitable for Sumac cultivating. The results can be used to exploit, cultivate and increase the cover of Sumac in specified areas.
Rangelands have a significant role in the supply of forage for grazing livestock and wildlife. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the rangeland grazing suitability for livestock and wildlife. In this study, the Jeliz Jand Basin was selected. This basin, with an area of 16210.44 ha, lies between longitudes 52° 36’ to 50° 52’ E and latitudes 35° 44’ to 35° 57’ N. It is located in north of Firouzkooh city, Tehran Province, Iran, and has a cold semi-arid climate. Data integration was carried out according to the FAO method (1991) using GIS on a scale of 1: 20000. For livestock and wildlife grazing, information on physical factors and vegetation in the form of three sub-models including forage production, water resources and soil sensitivity to erosion was integrated and the final model of rangeland suitability was produced. According to the results, the range suitability for sheep and goats grazing in the study area was determined to be moderate (S2) for 11.3% (1560.3 ha), low (S3) for 80.5% (11148 ha) and unsuitable (N) for 8.3% (1146.5 ha), respectively. Rangeland suitability for cattle grazing in the study area was determined to be high (S1) for 1.7% (228.9 ha), moderate (S2) for 3.6% (498.6%), low (S3) for 0.8% (111 ha) and unsuitable (N) for cattle grazing was 93.9% (13016.9 ha), respectively. Also, about 1491 ha of rangelands were low suitable for wildlife grazing. It is worth mentioning that slope percentage, vegetation composition (presence of class II and III species) and low vegetation cover because of overgrazing and the past land-use conversions were the most important factors limiting rangeland suitability in this Basin. However, it is necessary to reduce the population of cattle and goat, and grazing program should be set up and continued with sheep according to the principles of range management.
