Assessment of livestock pressure and its effect on desertification hazard, case study ‎area: Miyandehi Feizabad, Khorasan Razavi

Desertification, land degradation in arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid regions, is a global ýenvironmental problem with political and socio-economic ramifications. Land degradation ýmeans a process of impoverishment vegetation cover loss that may lead to a progressive and ýirreversible reduction of the biological or economic productivity. Overgrazing can cause ýdegradation of soil and vegetation, degradation of vegetation and soils in dry lands, ýsometimes called desertification, is thought to be a seriousþ þthreat to the sustainability of ýhuman habitationþ.þý Therefore, the intensity of grazing can serve as an index of environmental ýpressure. The Miandehi region, located in the Northeast Iran, has been selected as a test area ýto assess livestock pressure. The present paper examines for assessing the pressure of ýlivestock for the studied area using GIS. FAO-UNEP (1984) proposes the use of a ratio of ýpotential carrying capacity to present livestock density as an estimate of pressure of livestock. ýThis method has been adopted for the present study but with some modifications to achieve a ýbetter estimate of pressure related to the actual conditions of the area. Hazard maps of ýpressure of livestock were prepared after overlying and calculating the different parameters in ýa GIS. According to the final map pressure of livestock Miandehi region, areas was classified ýunder without hazard, Slight hazard, Severe hazard and Very severe hazard respectively, 21.3, ýý5.6, 9.8 and 63.3 % of the study area. Results show that the areas under very severe hazard ýare observed more in the Miandehi (63.3 % of total land).ý