Determining the appropriate location for the construction of rain catchment systems to provide the drinking water needed for livestock (Case study: Rangelands of Kalaleh city)

The construction of rainwater catchment surfaces as a solution to the lack of livestock drinking water in the northern pastures of Golestan province has been less investigated. In the current study, a Geographic Information System (GIS) has been used to identify suitable areas for collecting rainwater in Kalaleh pastures. Among the effective factors in choosing the appropriate site for the construction of rainwater catchment surfaces the criteria of land use, soil depth, distance from fault, slope, distance from waterways, and distance from cattle breeding were selected. Then, with the help of Boolean logic, the weighting of the selection criteria was carried out. In this method, the unsuitable and restrictive areas were assigned a weight of zero, and suitable areas were assigned a numerical value of one. Prone and non-prone areas for rainwater collection were identified by combining information layers. The results indicated that among the selection criteria, the most restricting factor in the study area was due to the slope which made 94.7% of the unsuitable areas for the construction of a rainwater catchment system to be recognized and 3.5% of the pastures have the necessary potential to implement the system. This result is not certain and achieving a desired result requires the existence of acceptable information and data and the selection of proper methods, techniques, and criteria, the way of utilizing them in the studies of identification of prone sites for the construction of catchment systems seems necessary.