Determination of Threshold of Effective Factors on Length Expansion of Gullies Using Data Mining Techniques in Mahourmilati Region, Fars Province

One of the most important types of water erosion is gully erosion. This type of erosion causes remarkable changes in lands، production of abundant sediment and deleterious social and economic consequences; especially in arid and semi arid regions of the world. Threshold is the point after which the behavior of the system changes and it can be related to the internal or the external factors of the system. One of the important questions about gullies is that in what condition the threshold of gully is created and expanded. Identifying the conditions seems important considering the fact that it is possible to compare conditions of the threshold with the regional conditions and determine how much the conditions are close to thresholds of gully creation and or Expansion. For this purpose، the current research aims to determine threshold of effective factors on length expansion of gullies in Mahourmilati region in south-west of Fars province by using the data mining techniques. The findings of the current research which were achieved by modeling based on K-Means Clustering Algorithms and CART Decision Tree and in Clementine software (version: 12. 0) indicated that the length expansion of gullies in the studied region is the function of SAR، soil acidity (pH)، and output area. To improve the soil of the studied region، it is recommended to consider improvements، revegetation and enhancement of soil organic matters prior to effective actions in controlling the length expansion of the gullies.