Investigating the Factors Affecting the Varak Basin Erosion and Its Risk Zonation Using EPM method

Soil erosion is one of the major environmental concerns of the present century. This issue has become a major problem to the environment and natural resources, so that statistics indicate that soil erosion in Iran is several times more than global average. This research was carried out with to investigate the factors affecting the Varak area erosion and its risk zonation using the EPM method. For this purpose, field visits and satellite images studying were used to investigate the erosion. Then, the information layers of the area including average slope, soil and rock susceptibility to erosion, land use and observational erosion were prepared, and information layers were weighted and the erosion risk susceptibility map was prepared. In addition, the results from the risk zonation of the region show that 6.3, 55.2, 26, 3.1 and 9.4 percent of the region are at the erosion risk classes of very low, low, moderate, severe, and very severe, respectively. Based on the zoning, the focus of the erosion-sensitive areas are in the southwest, northwest, and a part of the north of the region, which is consistent with the fossilized and fractured parts of the Asmari lime, which has a higher slope. Considering the field observations, investigating the precision measurement of the method used to prepare the potential erosion risk map of Varak watershed indicates that the EPM method has a fairly high precision.