An Urban Solid Waste Landfill Site Evaluation Process Incorporating GIS in Local Scale Environment: A Case of Ahvaz City, Iran

Landfill is one of the primary methods for urban solid waste disposal. In order to reduce the environmental adverse effects and to protect the public health and human welfare, evaluating the landfill is utmost importance. In this research work evaluation procedure for the current condition of Ahvaz city urban solid waste landfill site with criteria of Local Screening Method (LSM) is outlined. In this method, with combining GIS technologies and site investigation the main criteria are physical conditions, economical factors, and land use. These 14 criteria were used into the overlaying technique to determine suitability conditions in the study region. The obtained results indicated that Ahvaz solid waste landfill should be graded on a scale of very weak condition in local scale and ranked in order of in appropriate. The main reasons for the occurrence of this condition was considered as land purchase ability, lack of landfill cover values of natural vegetation in public view, difficulty in sampling and high groundwater levels inside of the study site.