Fuzzy Based Detection of Desertification-Prone Areas: A Case Study in Khorasan-Razavi Province, Iran

Abstract

In this article, a desertification susceptibility map was developed over Khorasan-Razavi ecoregions located in northeastern Iran with arid and semi-arid environments. For this purpose, a fuzzy algorithm regarding Dempster-Shafer theory was applied based on six main indicators including wind erosion, aridity severity, soil erodibility, landuse type, salinization and vegetation cover density chosen by Delphi techniques. The indicators were combined under linear fuzzy function and gained to a membership function for each layer. The results indicated about 43.5 % region is susceptible to soil erodibility; also cold hyper-arid and ultra-cold arid deserts ecoregions show a high range of sustainability to desertification.