The Evaluation of the Adaptability of Rural Districts of Neyshabour Plain to Groundwater Protection Policies

The adaptation of the same water resources management policies in a plain or watershed due to the heterogeneity of its areas generally leads to a reduction in the effectiveness of policies. Hence, the evaluation of the adaptability of different areas of the study area with water resources protection policies can be important and necessary.The aim of the current study is to evaluate the adaptability of rural districts of Neyshabour plain to groundwater protection policies. To achieve this goal, in the first step, economic, demographic, environmental, educational, and cultural, as well as communication criteria and sub-criteria are selected, and then the weights of the criteria and sub-criteria are determined using Fuzzy AHP. Then, the status of each of the rural districts in the Neyshabour plain based on the studied index is determined using a multi-criteria decision-making method (PROMETHEE) in 2017. The results show that economic and environmenral ctritera with weights of 40 and 19%, respectively, are of higher importance compared to other criteria in the adaptability index. According to the results of this study, three the rural districts of Ardoghsh, Mazol, and Zeberkhan have a higher adaptability to groundwater protection policies than other the rural districts of plain, and the rural districts of Ghazali, Eshghabad, and Belherat are in the final ranks. In order to increase the cooperation of farmers in the southern and western rural districts of the plain with groundwater conservation programs, it is suggested to use appropriate training and incentive policies as complementary policies in these areas.