Determining Effective Factors on Gully Development in Konartakhte Region, Fars Province

Gully erosion is a kind of water erosion that has high priority in Fars Province due to sediment production and enormous damages to land, roads and infrastructures. In this study, 15 gullies were selected and their morphometric characteristics, such as catchment area, soil, cover vegetation and climate were measured. In order to determine influential factors on the sediment production and gully development, relationship between gully volume as dependent variable and gully characteristics such as, length, width, depth and watershed characteristics such as area, slope, form factor, particle size, vegetation cover and maximum raining during 24 hour as independent variables were analyzed by using step wise method in SPSS (recipe 13) software. The results revealed that sediment production due to gully development was related to five variables of clay, sand, silt, slope and cover vegetation of the watershed above the gully heads. This result implied on the impact of the characteristics of soil, geology and watershed on the sediment production of gullies. Impact of soil and geologic factors indicated were more important than watershed characteristics. Investigation on the topographic threshold indicated that positive environmental than exponent implied that sub surface runoff is dominant on gully development. These results also indicate the impact of field observations proved the dominance of subsurface acting due to tunneling the geological formation on the gullies sediment yield.