Monitoring of the Actual State of Desertification using VPM and WASPAS Scoring Models

Considering the spread of desertification and the emergence of its extensive and long-term effects on the environment and human activities, appropriate management methods can reduce the intensity and spread of this phenomenon. Therefore, executive actions in this field should be based on knowledge of the current state of land desertification and its future development. Therefore, this research was conducted to evaluate the risk of desertification using VPM and WASPAS scoring models and a geographic information system as a case study in the Yazd-Khizrabad Plain from 2021 to 2022. In the framework of these models, effective indicators are identified based on field and library studies. The working units were then determined by the geomorphology method and the importance of the indicators in each unit was obtained in the form of pairwise comparisons based on the Delphi method. Next, the importance of the indices was estimated using the Shannon entropy method, and a decision matrix was formed. After balancing, zoning of the desertification intensity potential was performed by calculating the desirability coefficient using the VPM and WASPAS scoring methods in the ArcGIS software environment. results obtained showed that the land units of the Mountain Agriculture Ground (MAG) and Plain Agriculture Ground (PAG) have the highest desertification potential, which covers 7335.86 ha (35.9%) of the entire study area. Most of the land in the region is under the influence of desertification with a relatively moderate intensity (III). The quantitative value of the desertification potential for the whole region based on all the indicators was placed in the middle class (IV). The results of this study indicate the efficiency and ease of application of the VPM and WASPAS point approach techniques in evaluating the intensity of desertification.