A Sustainability Pattern of Land Use Optimization in Hablehroud Basin in Iran

The proper combination of different land use patterns is one of the important factors in maintaining and sustaining water and soil resources, especially in basin areas. Considering economic, social and environmental criteria, this study aimed at investigating the optimal and sustainable land uses in Hablehroud Basin in Tehran and Semnan provinces of Iran. Thus, the SWAT as a model and the PROMETHEE and ELECTRE models as two samples of the multi-attribute decision making method were employed. Data for calculating the environmental criteria such as temperature, rain, humidity and evaporation were collected during 26 years and those for the economic and social criteria such as production cost, gross income and employment were collected in 2017. The study results indicated that the horticulture use of land in the south areas of the basin had the first rank and the pasture use of land in the north had the last rank both in terms of socio-economic and environmental criteria. Also, comparing the socio-economic criteria with the environmental ones, opposite ranks were observed for horticulture land use in the north and pasture land use in the south areas. Therefore, based on the results, some recommendations were made to improve the current land use situations as well as to develop the land use patterns in the studied basin.