Analyzing the role of local society's environmental understanding played in natural resources operation in the watersheds of the North of Iran.(case study:Vazrood watershed– Noor)

Anybody has an image of his surrounding environment. To describe such an image, cultural geographers have used "environmental understanding" term. To understand why groups of human are settled in their natural environment, not only should geographers be aware of the environment characteristics, but also familiar with the attitude and cultural understanding of such environments. Just like experiences, likes and dislikes, environmental understanding also differs from person to person. Values and deep beliefs too, can affect such understanding. Spatial organization of natural resources in northern Iran and formed spatial formats there is mainly based on the kind of existing natural resources (forest, range, flowing rivers, and lots of springs) and inevitably residents' environmental understanding. Therefore being aware of their understanding of the role, quality and natural resource destruction reasons is crucial and necessary in order to find a suitable approach to recover flaws and make an environmental balance in the spatial organizations. This has not been paid attention to and millions of Rials have been spent during the last two decades on dictating that such environmental misbalance had appeared because of residents' traditional husbandry lifestyle; while natural resources operational attitudes and methods in northern watersheds, seem to be interrelated with the kind and amount of local society's (plain, forest and range kingdoms) environmental understanding; the idea this paper is being after. Statistical analysis in the area of understanding, based on special questions, show that temporary and permanent residents' behavior goes back to their level of understanding.