Watershed Management through Land use Optimization Using Mathematical and Spatial Optimization Approaches

Nowadays, human interferences in the natural resources cause the loss of these resources and lead to destructive floods, soil erosion and other various environmental, economic and social damages. Furthermore, increasing growth of population and climate change intensify the destructions. Thus management and planning through land use optimization is essential for the proper utilization, protection and revival of these resources. The purpose of this study is to couple the fuzzy goal programming and multi objective land allocation optimization approaches to develop a model for watershed management and planning in Chelgerd watershed. The proposed model is based on optimum area determination in various land uses and also their optimum local situation. In this research, a fuzzy model has been proposed. In this model, minimizing the amount of soil erosion and maximizing the amount of profit are priorities, respectively. Moreover, production resources including water and land as well as economic and social problems are limitations of the mentioned model. Results obtained show that the proposed model is an efficient model in land use optimization and sustainable area development and can increase profit to 37% and decrease sedimentation to 2.4%, respectively.