Extended Abstract
Introduction and Objective: Lack of proper management of land use in a watershed, has negative impacts on the available resources. Land use optimization is one of the suitable solutions for achieving a sustainable development and reducing wasted resources. The present study was carried out in the Kasilian watershed located in the Savadkoh County to determine the most appropriate composition of land use to reduce flood occurrence and maximize benefit.
Material and Methods: At first, all available studies including physiographic, soil science, vegetation, hydrology, socio-economic studies from Mazandaran Regional Water Company and Natural Resources and Watershed Management office were collected and completed during field visits. The costs and benefit for each land uses was obtained using a questionnaire. The amount of flood in different land uses was also obtained using HEC-HMS software and the use of information on three rainfall events in the years 1991-95 related to Sangdeh synoptic station and flood hydrograph of the same events in Valikbon hydrometric station located in the watershed outlet. The slope and soil depth maps based on land use standard as input to objective functions and constraints land use optimization model was prepared. Multi-objective linear programming model using the simplex method in ADBASE software was written and solved.
Results: The results showed that flood amount reduced from 0.89 m3 s-1 before optimization to 0.74 m3 s-1 after land use optimization in general and this indicates 24.49% reduction in flood amount. The benefit of different land uses in the studied watershed has also increased from 2505.102.285 million Rails per year, before land use optimization, to 14692.902 million Rails after land use optimization, and this indicates a decrease of 58.56% of benefit of the watershed after land use optimization according to the standard criteria.
Conclusion: The most sensitive factor is the reduction of rainfed land use and the increase of forest land uses in the Kasilian watershed, which have the greatest impact on reducing benefit and flood amount.
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