Hesel Pouri; Vahedberdi Sheikh; yeganeh hasan
Abstract
The present study has been carried out aiming at suitable site selection for rainwater harvesting across the northern rangelands of the Aq Qala district to supply drinking water for grazing livestocks using the effective criteria and multi-criteria decision support system. The rainwater harvesting suitability ...
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The present study has been carried out aiming at suitable site selection for rainwater harvesting across the northern rangelands of the Aq Qala district to supply drinking water for grazing livestocks using the effective criteria and multi-criteria decision support system. The rainwater harvesting suitability map was created by integrating the multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) technique and standardization (fuzzification) of continuous raster data within ArcGIS. To determine the suitable rainwater harvesting areas, the weighted linear combination (WLC) was applied in the range of 0 to 1 using the multi-criteri evaluation (MCE) within the ArcGIS and and the data of various criteria including distance to water source, distance to cattle post, stocking density, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), distance to road, slope percentage, distance to settlement and soil texture. The result indicated that about 2950 ha (~5.2%) of the study area have a good suitability for implementation of rainwater harvesting systems to supply water for grazing livestocks. The results of questionnaire survey revealed that about 70% of 107 stakeholders of the rangelands are highly willing to install and utilize rainwater harvesting systems, but high cost of installing is considered the main hinderance.
Fatemeh Salarian; Jamshid Ghorbani; Ghodratolah Heydari; Nosratolah Safaian
Abstract
Conservation and restoration of biodiversity is very important for degraded rangeland ecosystems. It is necessary to assess the potential of soil seed bank as a major source of species. In this study, the soil seed bank size and composition were compared between exclosure and grazed areas. This was done ...
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Conservation and restoration of biodiversity is very important for degraded rangeland ecosystems. It is necessary to assess the potential of soil seed bank as a major source of species. In this study, the soil seed bank size and composition were compared between exclosure and grazed areas. This was done in Chahar-Bagh rangelands in Golestan province. Soil was sampled in Exclosure and Grazing from 0-5 and 5-10 cm depths in 90 quadrates of 1 m2. Then seed bank composition was identified after seed germination in glasshouse. A total of 28 species from 15 families were found in soil seed bank flora of both exclosure and grazed areas. Compositae, Gramineae, and Rosaceae were dominant in soil seed bank. Also, hemicryptophyte, Forbs and perennials were abundant in the seed bank of both areas. Exclosure significantly increased the seed density of Digitaria sanguinalis, Potentilla canescens, Stellaria media, Sonchus oleraceusand Galium verum in the seed bank. The species richness and diversity indices were not significantly different between two areas. These indices significantly increased in upper soil layer in exclosure while these indices were not significantly different between two soil depths in grazed area. The result of this study showed that exclosure influenced the soil seed banks, however, there was no evidence of positive changes in species richness and diversity indices and also an increase of grasses in soil seed bank.
