Assessment of environmental sustainability of Katuyeh artificial recharge project (southern Fars province)

In recent years, due to frequent droughts and water scarcity, artificial recharge projects are recognized as an operational solution to overcome the water scarcity. Despite the effectiveness of such projects to develop region, there is no information about their impact on the environmental sustainability. In this research, the artificial recharge project of Katuyeh (Larestan- Fars) has been ecologically evaluated by the forest, rangeland and watershed management method over two different periods (i.e. before and after implementation of the project, 2009-2016). For this purpose, 4 criteria and 18 indicators (six water indicators, five vegetation cover indicators, three land use indicators and, four soil indicators) were selected based on experts’ opinions, data availability and consistency of the indicators with the ecological condition of the region. In order to weighing the criteria, expert's opinions were used in Delphi method and Snowball framework. The results showed that the sustainability of the development of the region from environmental view after the implementation of the project has changed significantly before its implementation, the region with a moderate degree of sustainability before implementation of the project has achieved a good degree of sustainability at the time after the implementation of the project. The sustainability upgrade has been made with a slight slope.Therefore,it can be concluded that the construction of the artificial recharge project has been able to improve the environmental sustainability of the area.