The 2008 Joint Meeting of the Society for Range Management and the America Forage and Grassland Council.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008 - 4:40 PM

Evaluating Land Capability of Yekkeh Chenar Maraveh Tappeh for Range Application Using Gis

Mohammad reza Najibzadeh, Natural resources, Natural resources research center of East Azarbaijan, Tabriz Botanical Garden, Azarbaijan SQ., Tabriz, Iran and Adel Sepehry, Range and watershed management, University of Gorgan, Gorgan, Iran.

Land destruction in arid areas is a common phenomenon that influence world rangelands. Utilization in a wrong way of ranges and nonsuitable handling with landcapability of ranges in using of these lands can cause land destruction. It is obvious to avoiding damage of  environmental resourceses be in harmony with natural and use the natural potential of land in logical way. Optimum utilization of land resources needs to evaluating its development capability, to have both sustainable development and optimum and use factor from environment. In this studing our target is to present a suitable model in ranges evaluating. We choose Yekkeh Chenar Maraveh tappeh area ranges and try to find a suitable model for this area and collect necessary information for this model from available sources and complete it with field studies.In this studing to assign range application, we use (ERAMS) model between various evaluating land capability models. This model includes 4 parameters: Slope, Soil salinity, Soil depth and Rainfall. This model presents suitable range land application for each land with using these 4 parameters. It is prepared map of Slope, Soil salinity, Soil depth and isohyet and compose of all these maps each other by overlay method to get the final land capability map.  It is used cross tabulation to assign agreement values. According to the results KAPA index of agreement value it is  calculated 41%. That  means  (ERAMS) model ables to assign the potential changes of area with 41% accuracy. At the next level that we entered changes in rainfall classification, KAPPA index of agreement value be calculated 43%. That  means this method can assign the high density vegetation areas. So this model is recommended to use at vast and high density vegetation areas.