Nature Environment and Pollution Technology

Masoud Masoudi ¹, Elham Asrari ²

Affiliations
1 Department of Desert Regions Management, Agricultural College, Shiraz University, IR
2 Payame Noor University, IR

Abstract

South of the Zagros belt, the entire land of Southern Iran faces problems arising out of various types of land degradation of which soil salinity forms a major type. The Mond river basin, located centrally to this zone, has been selected as a test area to develop a statistical model for predicting the salinity of soil using different indicators of soil salinity. The soil salinity data were taken at 49 different samples in the study area. The data as indicators of soil salinity have been gathered from the records and reports published by the different departments of the Ministries of Agriculture, Defence and Energy of Iran. The GIS analysis of various indicators and salinity of soil samples considered proved useful for understanding their relationship in a statistical software. In the present study, the relations between the soil salinity and the indicators of soil salinity have been found statistically in the software of SPSS. To find a regression equation for soil salinity, max EC in 1 m depth of soil has been considered as dependent variable while the indicators of soil salinity including soil texture, water table, dry index, slope, index of efficacy of surface geology (ESG) and groundwater quality are considered as independent variables. For this purpose, the regression equations for two methods of 'enter' and 'stepwise' in software of SPSS have been established. The linear regression equations define the variations of the soil salinity depending on the indicators and also give an idea about the levels of relations. The results obtained show that the relations between the soil salinity and the indicators especially groundwater data do exist.

Keywords

Soil Salinity, Indicator, Regression Models, Statistical Analysis, Correlations.

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Masoud Masoudi ¹, S. A. Abtahi ², S. H. Badiee Namaghi ³

Affiliations
1 Department of Desert Regions Management, Shiraz University, Shiraz, IR
2 Department of Soil Science, Shiraz University, Shiraz, IR
3 Desert Regions Management, Agriculture College, Shiraz University, Mashhad, IR

Abstract

Erosion is a phenomenon during which soil and sediment materials are transferred by such damaging factors as water and wind. The type of erosion, of course, is different in various climates. As an example, in wet and semi-wet areas, water erosion is more likely than wind erosion. In turn, wind erosion is the main reason for damaging and transferring soil and sediment materials in arid and semi-arid zones, which can cover talented lands and bring about indispensable damage to land administrators. Wind erosion in arid zones is one of the most important processes of desertification, which is considered in different forms and in various models. Wind erosion status was investigated using the IRIFR method. In this method, nine parameters affecting wind erosion process including lithology, morphology and relief, wind velocity, soil characteristics, type and plant cover percentage, wind erosion features, soil moisture, type and distribution of sandy dune, land use and land management were considered. Ultimately, wind erosion index was classified in five classes. ArcGIS 9 was used to analyse and prepare the layers of quality maps to integrate the individual sub-indicator maps. Results show those areas classified under moderate category have a greater extent (61%) in the study area while areas under high and very high hazard cover 15% of lands.

Keywords

Wind Erosion, Nishabur Iran, IRIFR, Empirical Methods.

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