Qanat maintenance from key informant's viewpoint: A qualitative research in Taft county

Qanats are the most important groundwater management tool to cope with water scarcity in arid and semi-arid regions in a sustainable manner. Despite their socio-economical functions, these managerial tools are confronted with lots of challenges. Taft County has hosted significant number of qanats that has been neglected during recent decades. The consequence of this negligence is the loss of capacity in number of barren qanats of the region. The present research aims at investigating qanat maintenance reasons in Taft county. Qualitative research approach and grounded theory method was used. The statistical population was qanat experts (qanat workers: pitman, water lords and managers) and subject matter specialists (Regional water authority and Agri-jihad organization). To reach theoretical saturation, 22 experts and 12 specialists were interviewed, respectively. Results revealed that the most important qanat maintenance reasons were categorized to environmental (amount of precipitation, water quality, qanat capacity), institutional-economical (receiving credits, qanat users’ income, and technical support facilities), socio-educational (youth training, introducing water technology to farmers, social capital, religious beliefs and women participation in qanat), managerial- fundamental (impassable transiting facilities, over-exploitation of qanats, drilling illegal wells and trans-passing on qanat bound) and agricultural-natural (water pollution and water loss during non-agricultural seasons).