Effect of Land Use Change from Forest to Agriculture and Abounded of Agriculture on Soil Physical and Chemical Properties in Zagros Forest Ecosystem

Deforestation and land use change of forests into simple ecosystems is as a global concerning and this problem also increases in Asia during the 20th century.This study aimed to study effect of land use change from forest to agriculture and abounded of agriculture on soil physical and chemical properties in Zagros forest ecosystem.

We consider similar conditions in terms of physiography by maximum different height in150 m and distancing less than 3 km including undisturbed forest (control), Long-term abounded of agriculture and continues agriculture.

The results of one-way ANOVA showed that all soil physical and chemical properties had significant differences among different land uses. The highest amount of organic carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium found in control and agricultural abounded. According to PCA analysis, control and Long-term abounded of agriculture land uses were strongly correlated with the same direction of the first and second axis. This means that soil attributes in these land uses were similar.

Results showed that change in land use from Zagros forest into agriculture had distinguished negative effecton soil physical and chemical properties.By doing long-term protection on degraded soil because of land use change can improve soil properties like forest soils conditions. The monitoring of applied management such as conservation management on soil properties according to the distance of plots studied using principal components analysis is possible.