Comparison of different land uses and ecological capability in Hesare Hosseini Watershed using GIS

This research was aimed to investigate the ecological capability of Hesare Hosseini Watershed to determine optimum land uses and improve the current environmental management. Ecological and socio-economic characteristics were first studied and mapped. These maps were digitized in Arc/Info software and then were entered to the Arcview software with other data for creating database. Digital Elevation Model (DEM) was produced in Arcview using topographic map. Based on that, the maps of slope, aspect and elevation were produced. Then, the environmental units map was prepared by overlying the maps of elevation, slope, aspect, soil types and vegetation cover in Arcview. The land capability for different land uses was determined by Iranian ecological model using Structured Query Language (SQL) in Arcview. According to the obtained results, this region has no first and second-class capability for irrigation farming. Overall, 54.51% of the watershed area is suitable for range management, 12.76% for dry farming, 31.1% for conservation and 1.63% for irrigated farming.