Application of Resilience Concept in the Analysis of Basic Resources Security for the Shazand Watershed, Markazi Province, Iran

Focusing only on problems can lead to neglecting the strengths and capacities of a watershed. As an emerging approach, resilient thinking can be used to better understand watersheds as complex and dynamic systems between people and nature, and facilitate the transition to a more resilient watershed through efficient watershed management. Therefore, the present study is planned with the aim of conceptual modeling of watershed resilience using key dimensions of ecological, social, economic and infrastructure.

For this purpose, first the conceptualization of watershed resilience was done according to the prevailing conditions for the period 2016-2017. Then, the information and data of effective criteria in different dimensions were prepared and extracted, so that for the ecological dimension used from the watershed health index and for social, economic and infrastructural dimensions, 13, 8 and 13 criteria, respectively, were considered. Then, the mentioned criteria were standardized and their weight was determined according to their importance based on the principal component analysis method. Then, the criteria of different dimensions were first combined separately using the geometric mean method and the resilience of each dimension was obtained.

Then, through multivariate regression, the effect of each dimension on the resilience of the Sharand Watershed was investigated and finally, the resilience map of the Sharand Watershed was obtained.

According to the results of the present study, it can be acknowledged that watershed management in the face of risks requires a full understanding of the status and dynamics of social and ecological systems in response to stress. In this regard, using the approach of resilience and analysis of the affecting components in the watershed scale can be one of the effective ways to achieve integerated management of watersheds.