Locating Optimal Countryside Settlement Sites for Nomads in Northern Khorasan

The nomadic way of life and living is different and apart from urban and rural way of life. Accommodation and settlement of nomads is one of the most important issues on Iranian society. Northern Khorasan is one of the regions with a high capacity to accommodate the nomadic communities. The purpose of this paper is to identify and evaluate the capacity of North Khorasan province to accommodate nomad communities and also to investigate the nomad communities’ bottlenecks and problems. This paper also aims for the introduction of the factors affecting the optimal site of nomads settlement and introduction of prioritized zones for optimal accommodation of nomads (nomadic sites), using multi-criteria decision-making methods (AHP) in GIS environment.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: The emergence of nomadism has been under the focus of scientists for a long time, and as Masoudi, Ibn Khaldoon et al. have noted this phenomenon. They believe that many factors account for it. Some think that increase in the population is the main reason for nomadism. Some other think that after farming, human beings are doomed to be nomads to use marginal regions. Thus, nomadism and ranching are two implications of farming with water products. Tardof, the renowned Iran expert, names the following common features for Iranian nomadism: 1-producing corn 2-range 3-division of labor 4-relations of production 5. exploitation based on the joint use of pastures
Some other figures such as Spooner have considered water and soil fertility as two major important factors in the continuation of nomadism. Bryan Spooner believes that nomadism can be a result of mass production of grain. Accordingly, he assumes that nomadism and ranching are the implication of irrigated agriculture.
Land use planning is science of land division for different uses and purposes of life. The positioning of land use either before planning, in traditional format or in predetermined plans follow certain principles and criteria. Traditional patterns of land distribution in rural and urban areas also represents a significant regularity in the user's location.
Because of its experience in with livestock, nomadic community can have enormous efficiency with a little attention. One of the goals of comprehensive development of tribal and nomad areas is the development of industrial livestock or developed traditional ranching. Therefore, optimum locating of nomadic sites is an important step in development plans of nomadic society.
This is an applied, descriptive-analytical research that collects data via library and field study. To fulfill this end, 227 questionnaires were distributed among the nomads of the province, and their activities as well as their tendency to settle or not settle was measured. The results of the analyses show that an overall of 60.79% of the nomads want to settle permanently; 29.51 desire to move, and 9.69 like both. To optimally locate the nomads’ settlement, important criteria in their settlement and their priorities were determined. For this purpose, after preparing Binary Matrices, 10 officials from cities and managers of nomadic affairs were interviewed. After developing pairwise matrices, preferable coefficient of effective criteria and sub-criteria related to each indicator was determined. After the calculation of weights in software Expert choice and comparison of the weights in the method of AHP, final weights were put into GIS software to overlap the layers, and output maps derived from the hierarchical method were compared to the maps of the proposed websites introduced in the Organization of Nomadic Affairs in North Khorasan. The results were presented in the form of output maps and comparison tables.
To provide the necessary layers (criteria) and to optimally locate the nomads settlement in Northern Khorasan, first the efficient criteria are identified and defined in four categories. Binary matrices are provided for each factor. In this stage, the criteria efficient in locating are obtained based on the descriptive and graphic information by GIS software. Finally, the optimal location of settlement of nomads or nomad towns are determined according to the receptivity of layers from locating. Four categories are identified: 1- Inappropriate, 2- relatively inappropriate, 3- appropriate, 4- completely appropriate.
After determining the coefficients, the importance of criteria and indices for showing the overlapping of criteria, there was a need for data gathering, their digitization, formation of spatial databases and generating appropriate layers of Nomads optimal site location for settlement or nomad towns. For this purpose the produced information layers, the importance coefficients of the criteria and the overlap of layers are determined. Then the maps of location priority based on the criteria for Nomads optimal site location for settlement and prioritized areas are presented.
The results show that the criteria of distance from faults, distance from watercourse, less distance from man roads and the type of land use for settlement have respectively the highest priority and importance in locating the nomads site of settlement in northern Khorasan. Finally, basic suggestions will be proposed.