Identifying Rangeland Development and Restoration Operations Targets (Case Study: Hossein Abad Bazoft Basin, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province, Iran)

The purpose of this study was identifying rangeland development andrestoration operations targets. This study was conducted in Hossein Abad Bazoft basinwith 7162 ha area, located in south east of Farsan County, Chaharmahal and BakhtiariProvince, Iran. The basin has various land uses including rangeland, forest, irrigated farmand garden, dry farm, residential area and rock mass. In this study, during land surveyingprocess, ecological carrying capacity was first calculated for the rangelands and forestsecosystem. After capability evaluation, with regard to keeping the current land use andavoiding from more land degradation, restoration programs were proposed. In this regard,required data layers including altitudinal classes, slope classes, aspect classes, rangelandcondition and trend, climate, soil hydrologic groups, depth and texture of the soil, geologyand geomorphology were overlaid using GIS 9.3 by intersect method, and 280homogenous units were resulted. The results of homogenous unit characteristicsassessment showed that the region fell respectively in the categories 1, 3, 6, 3 and 4 forconservation, rangeland, forest, agriculture and unauthorized agriculture capabilities.Finally, according to the characteristics of the achieved capabilities and defining requiredcriteria to propose each executive program, we proposed the location and the kind of theexecutable restoration programs such as exclosure, hill seeding, converting the inefficientdry farms to forage plants cultivation and in forest quantitative and qualitativeregeneration.