Comparison of Fuzzy Inference Systems and Fuzzy Hierarchical Analysis Methods for Study of Karst Development (Case Study: Khuzestan Province, Shirin-Bahar)

Digging and excessive exploitation of alluvial water sources, create bad condition for many alluvial aquifers in the plains of the country. Given these circumstances, the desire to use the karst sources for which less attention has been paid is increasing. In this study, by considering some karst development criteria such as lithology, altitude, slope, rainfall, temperature, vegetation index, drainage density, lineament density, lineament intersection density, distance from lineament and distance from the intersection of lineaments and applying fuzzy inference system and fuzzy hierarchical analysis, modeling of karst development has been done. The results showed that by the method of fuzzy inference system the development zones with high and very high degrees covered 79.1 percent of the total area, while for the fuzzy hierarchial analysis method it was 26 percent. For weights validation used in the fuzzy hierarchical analysis, ±10%, ±5% sensitivity analyses were done.