Optimizing land use pattern to reduce soil erosion

Abstract

Soil erosion hazard is one of the main problems can affect ecological balance in watersheds. This study aimed to determine the optimal use of land to reduce erosion and increase the resident's income of Qushchi watershed in West Azerbaijan province, Iran. Income and expenses for the current land uses were calculated with field studies. Damages resulting from the soil erosion were estimated by soil depth equal to the specified land uses. For three different options including the current status of land uses without and with land management, and the standard status of land uses, multi-objective linear programming model was established by LINGO software. Then the optimization problem of the land use was solved by simplex method. Finally, the best option of land use was determined by comparing erosion rate and its cost in each scenario. Then the circumstances and the recommended conditions were compared. The results indicated that the current surface area of current land uses is not suitable to reduce erosion and increase income of residents and should change in the optimum conditions. At the optimum level, there should change horticulture area of 408 to 507 (ha), irrigated land area of 169 to 136 (ha) and dry farming of 636 to 570 (ha), while conversion of rangeland area not indispensable. In addition, the results showed that in case of the optimization of land use, soil erosion and the profitability of the whole area will decrease 0.75% and increase 3.68%, respectively. In case of land management practices, soil erosion will decrease 42.27% and the profitability increase 21.39% while in the standard conditions, soil erosion will decrease 60.95% and profitability will increase 24.20%. The results of the sensitivity analysis showed that the changes in the horticulture and range land areas have the greatest impact on the increasing profitability and reducing soil erosion of Qushchi watershed. So, it is recommended using Education and Extension to promote the importance of land management to understand how proper use of the land.