An Evaluation on the Intensity of Desertification by using IMDPA model Case study: Baghedar region, Yazd

Desertification is regarded as the third global challenge of water scarcity and drought crisis in the 21st century. This phenomenon has more damaging effects than other regions in arid, semi-arid and dry semi-wet due to fragile ecosystem. Iran also due to the special geographical position and a fragile ecosystem is at the risk of desertification. In most of the area of natural resources of Iran, the ecosystem is fragile and arid conditions. According to the new definition of desert, except a narrow strip in north of Iran, other parts of the country encounter desertification problem. In various studies, it has been found that a variety of factors affecting desertification and varies from climate to climate and region to region. So dealing with this phenomenon, especially in arid and semi-arid countries will be very useful and beneficial. In this regard, offering appropriate solutions and management practices to reduce the severity of this phenomenon and also prevented the spreading. In this way, understanding the process of desertification and its causes, intensification and also knowing the strength and weakness of these processes and factors will be very important which needs to be investigated. In recent years, with national and international studies, the most common model in the world for mapping desertification has been collected which the most important of them are: UNEP-FAO, TAXONOMY ESAs1, MEDALUS, ICD, MICD2, and IMDPA3. In our country, MICD and ICD and recently IMDPA have been offered.Research Methodology In this study the risk of desertification, soil and vegetation using two criteria that each index is composed of several criteria that include:Soil: Soil Depth, Electrical Conductivity (EC), Soil Texture and Gravel Percentage. Vegetation cover: Vegetation Utilization, Vegetation Condition, Vegetation Recovery In the next stage, after considering the impact of each indicator in the area of desertification, it was given a weight between 1-4 and the manner of given weight was equal to linear to weight. So that the value of 1 for the best condition and 4 for the worst condition of weight from the view of severity of desertification of region. For determining the extent of esertification of every measure, the geometric mean of benchmark index, according to the following formula was useful and finally for each criterion with regarding to the performed weighting a map was prepared.

کلیدواژه ها:

Baghedar ، Desertification ، Criteria ، Index ، IMDPA