فهرست مطالب majid ownagh

In the management of natural resource, recognizing socioeconomic factors affecting land use change is essential for achieving sustainable development and land use planning. In this research, we investigate and determine the socio-economic factors affecting land use changes in the Maraveh Tappeh region of Golestan province. This area has been affected by land use change in recent years. The rangelands and forests have decreased during the study period (1984-2014), and agricultural use with an annual increase of 132 hectares has reached to 10332.97 ha in 2014. This descriptive-analytic research was carried out in 16 villages in the study area with survey sampling method. Data collection was performed by questionnaire and the numbers of questionnaires were determined 310 people. Sampling was done through a Cochran formula and cluster sampling and multi-stage sampling. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to determine the reliability of the study and it was found 0.75. In this study, exploratory factor analysis method was used. For the factor analysis, the principal components method was used using rotation varimax. The results of factor analysis showed that socio-economic factors affect on land-use changes in Maraveh Tappeh region and these factors are including: non-economic efficiency of animal husbandry, Low land per capita for each farmer, rural unemployment, low income and high cost of living, increasing input price, the need for housing and the lack of awareness, social reputation and land ownership. These eight factors explained 63.80% of the total variance. Considering researching findings, attention to economic and financial problems and employment condition of village’s resident of Maraveh Tappeh region is essential. Also, husbandry and livestock production management and supply of livestock inputs have been proposed to reduce the land use changes of forests and rangelands and to protect the natural resources.

Indiscriminate land utilization methods, forest and rangeland degradation, land abandonment and development of residential areas contribute to the changes in flow intensity, erosion rate and sedimentation. Therefore, having knowledge on the effect of land use changes on discharge flow and sediment yield has been found necessary. The present research aims at investigating the effects of these factors by means of the semi-distributed Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) in Galikesh watershed, Golestan province (as a tributary of the River Gorganroud), in an area covering approximately 39000 hectares. This model was used in a 27-year period for simulation, calibration, validation and optimization of the parameters affecting flow and sediment yield. Land-use maps were prepared form the Landsat imageries dated 1987, 2000 and 2013. The SUFI2 model was used for model calibration and validation. Nash-Sutcliffe (NS) index was used as the objective function during model calibration (1990-2007) for the simulation of discharge and suspended load, which resulted in 0.63 and 0.61 that could be interpreted as satisfactory compared to the standards set in previous research. To evaluate the effect of land use changes on runoff and sediment yield, all model inputs, other than land use, were assumed constant. The results demonstrated that land use changes since 1987 to 2013 have led to an increase in annual runoff height by 1.40 mm and annual sediment concentration by 2 t.ha-1.

The socio-economic factors affecting land use changes in the Maraveh Tappeh region was determined from the viewpoint of beneficiaries and experts. The items of questionnaires designed as rating scale based on the five options Likert. Reliability of questionnaires was determined by Cronbach's alpha. Two sets of questionnaires were designed for beneficiaries and experts. Reliability of beneficiaries and experts questionnaires obtained 0.75 and 0.80, respectively. A total of 310 beneficiaries and 42 experts responded to the questionnaires. Mann-Whitney non-parametric test was used to compare the mean between the experts and beneficiaries. The reality amount of significant difference was obtained from the effect size. Rating average was used for each item and its priority. In ten items, significant difference at the 0.01 level between the viewpoints of beneficiaries and experts was observed. The high cost of living, low income of rural families and unemployment in rural areas were the top three priorities from the viewpoint of beneficiaries. The low income of rural household, the high cost of living and increasing the price of farmland were the most effective factors from the viewpoint of experts. Economic factors were the key priorities of land use change in viewpoint of both beneficiaries and experts, indicating that experts had the necessary experience and understanding of beneficiaries’ condition and were positive and important notes for policy making and management issues.

In this research, land use changes in previous years and the possibility of predicting in the future using Markov chain model were investigated in the Maraveh Tappeh region of Golestan province. Therefore, using images of MSS, ETM+ and OLI sensors of LandSat satellite and using ancillary information, land use maps of 1986, 2000 and 2014 was provided and land use map of 2024 was predicted. According to the results, dense forest area decreased during the study period and with passing time but the area of agricultural land increased with the passage of time while the dense rangeland area decreased during the period 1984-2000. The annual growth rate of agricultural land has achieved 113.45 ha during the period 1984-2000 and this change value was obtained 91.27 ha for the period 2000-2014. The results of predicting changes in the time interval 2014-2028, showed it is possible that will be decreased semi-dense forest and dense rangelands and will be increased other land-use areas according to results of model predictions. The highest increase will be belonging to agricultural land use that will be increased to 25.89 ha per year. According to research findings, land-use changes are causing degradation of natural resource areas. However, in recent years, have taken effective actions to protect these areas, but more attention and protection of natural resources and environment in the Marave Tappeh region is essentially still.