Morphological Quality Evaluation of Taleghan River

Alterations in river morphological quality are derived from quantification of human pressures as well as river morphological alteration. Taleghan River is an important source of water for the irrigation of Agri cultural lands in Qazvin Plain. For some economic considerations of Taleghan dam reservoir on the river as well as geology, some reaches of the river have undergone alterations. It seems important to morphological quality assessment in order to planning issues. Our study’s aim is to contribute to the morphological quality evaluation based on a revisited Morphological Quality Index (rMQI) protocol. The rMQI scoring system allows for the quantification of changes when compared to reference conditions. The rMQI corresponds to less than 30%, reflecting a good morphological quality; the rMQI corresponds to more than 30%, reflecting an extremely poor morphological quality. In this context, the paper presents all of the Taleghan River reaches suffer from an extremely poor morphological quality. Causes of degradation are meandering as well as numerous anthropogenic pressures in the upstream part of the basin. In order to revive Taleghan River as well as improve its water quality, preserving and remediating native vegetation, prevention and remediation of land use degradation in upstream's basin as well as river bank erosion control measures can use hard and soft strategies engineering are recommended.