Suitability of medicinal plants in rangelands of Lasem Watershed (Amol-Mazandaran Province)

Due to the lack of sufficient knowledge on rangeland suitability, rangelands are utilized intensely to provide livestock products and therefore other aspects of utilization have been ignored. However, Iran with more than 8000 plant species is one the world's richest plant communities so that medicinal plants comprise much of this rich flora. Due to the high species diversity, Lasem Watershed has a great potential in the field of medicinal plants. This research was aimed to determine the suitability of medicinal plants in the mentioned watershed. The final suitability map of medicinal plants was prepared by combining vegetation and environmental factors in GIS environment. Sampling was performed randomly within the vegetation types using two 100-m perpendicular transects to measure vegetative characteristics including the frequency, canopy cover percentage, composition and production of medicinal species in 1-m2 plots. According to the obtained results, around 10.6% of the study area (1071.4 ha) was in good suitability class (S1), 28.1% (2841 ha) in fair suitability class (S2), 41.5% (4193.5 ha) in poor suitability class (S3), and 20% of the study area (2006.8 ha) was classified as non-suitable (N). Generally, production economic index was identified as the most important factor, reducing the rangeland suitability of Lasem watershed. In addition, due to the topographic conditions of the region, slope plays a significant role in reducing rangeland suitability.