Study of the Farmers' Awareness of the Climate Change in the Rural-Coastal Areas around the Tashk and Bakhtegān Lake

The phenomenon of climate change has many negative influences on the various systems including the water resources, environment, industry, health, agriculture and all systems interacting with the climate system. The water resources system is one of the most important of them, which plays a vital role in the people's lives in rural areas. The purpose of this study was to assess the farmers' awareness of the climate change in the rural areas around the Tashk and Bakhtegan Lake in Fārs province. It was a descriptive-analytic research. The research population included all 17 villages within a 3 km radius of Tashk and Bakhtegān Lake with 2522 households who are engaged in the agricultural activities, 333 households were selected as sample population using Cochran formula with 0.5% error rate. In order to achieve these goals, in addition to documentary studies, a wide range of indicators was studied in the framework of field studies (the questionnaires and the field observation forms). The SPSS software was used for the data analysis. Findings indicated that the farmers with the mean of 4.47 and the significance value of 0.000 have the most awareness and knowledge about the climate change in the study area. Also the results of Kendall correlation coefficient test showed that there are a significant negative correlation between the negative effects of the climate change and the classes of distance of villages from Tashk and Bakhtegān Lake (-0.06) with the error less than 0.01%. Also, the results of the Spearman correlation coefficient test showed that there is a significant positive correlation between the farmers' awareness of the climate change and the use of adaptation strategies to climate change with respect to the correlation coefficient (0.197) and the error level less than 0.01%.