A New Method for landfill Site Selection Based on Determining Soil Quality Index

Soil quality index is able to assist quantifying soil status in different usage. The objective of this study was to present a new method for one of the most important environmental challenges, municipal solid waste landfill siting, based on determining soil quality index. After presenting the proposed method, it was used for landfill site selection of Marvdasht. First, soil functions including daily waste cover, container and support of waste, renovating some waste products and landfill final cover were determine to find out soil quality index. Thereafter, proper extractable soil properties from soil map were defined to quantify soil functions. Subsequent to data standardization, data weighting were performed by analytic hierarchy process. Next, with gathering data, soil quality index was derived for each soil map unit. The result of proposed method shows that almost 8000 hectares of the study area is suitable for landfill construction. The situations of suitable areas were comparable with the result of common environmental landfill siting in the study area. But in the new proposed method, the numbers of evaluation criteria were less than the traditional method and the site selection approach was easier and more cost effective. Further, the productivity of soils for more valuable usage like agriculture was considered.