Assessment of municipal solid waste landfill sites using GIS (Case study: west of Mazandaran province)

Several factors to reduce the negative impacts on natural resources as well as public health in landfill sites should be considered. So in the present study the significance lies in the fact that it tends to assess the suitability of the existing municipal landfill sites in the west area of Mazandaran province, located in north of Iran, and the south coast of the Caspian Sea. In order to carry out this assessment, 3 guidelines such as United States Environmental Protection Agency, management and planning organization of Iran and Iran department of environment are used. After reviewing all the specified criteria in each of the guidelines with Arc GIS software and visit the field, the authenticity of each deposit site of the study area and the entire area also was examined; and eventually the appropriate areas were identified. As a result, all of the 10 landfill sites were unsuitable with the Iran department of the environment, according to the management and planning organization of Iran only Marzan abad site was suitable and according to USEPA criteria Noor, Noshahr and Kelar abad were suitable and other site were unsuitable. In the entire studied area 20%, according to the Iran department of environment, 48.5%, according to the management and planning organization of Iran and 77.9% of the study area according to the guideline of USEPA were suitable for landfill siting.