Optimizing Management of Soil Erosion in Orazan Sub-basin, Iran

Land use optimization is one of the appropriate methods for soil conservation programs that allow watershed managers and decision makers to choose the best land use practices. With the objective of optimizing land use to minimize soil erosion, the present research was conducted in one of the Taleghan sub-basins in Iran, namely, Orazan sub-basin, with an area of 2,706 ha. To achieve the objective, the area, the erosion rate, and the net income value of each land use was assessed according to the pertinent standards. Then, limitations and objective functions were determined and the optimization problem was solved by using Steuer method (1995) and ADBASE software. The results revealed that optimizing land use while taking into consideration the legal restrictions (Article 56 of The Forest and Rangeland Nationalization Law) leads to a decrease of 10.29 percent in erosion rate (from 18253.39 t y -1 to 16373.51 t y -1) and 17.71 percent lower net income(from 2,382.12 to 1,960.28 million Rials). In contrast, optimization without consideration to legal restrictions would result in 22.24 percent increase in the net income and 6.93 percent decrease in erosion rate.