Assessment and comparison of ecological indexes of arid land rangelands under two types of management approaches Ecological-oriented and social-ecological-oriented(Study area: Sarbisheh city in South Khorasan Province)

The search for the technical perspectives of the country's natural resources management depicts the important fact that management approaches play a very important role in the protection, rehabilitation, and sustainable use of these resources. In this regard, the present study was conducted to evaluate and compare the ecological indicators of rehabilitated rangelands under two types of ecological-oriented and socio-ecological-oriented management approaches. For this purpose, the international carbon sequestration project and the desertification project of Sarbisheh plain were selected as two projects with socio-ecological-oriented and ecological-oriented management approaches, respectively. Then, in the executive scope of each project, three types of rangeland improvement operations, including plantation, crescent construction, seeding, and sowing were selected, and the percentage of vegetation, the amount of forage production, and carbon sequestrated in the soil were the basis for evaluation and comparison. Vegetation was measured by the linear transect placement method, production amount was measured by the double sampling method, and soil carbon was measured by Wallace and Blake method. The results of the analysis of variance showed that the interaction between the type of management and corrective operations on the value of ecological indexes was a significant difference at (p < /em><0.01). The highest value of indexes was observed in social-ecological-oriented management based on plant operations, and the lowest value was observed in ecological-oriented management under the same activity. The results show that capacity building, institutionalization, and real participation of the local community in all stages of planning, implementation, monitoring, and operation of these areas, in the socio-ecological management approach, bring more success in improving the index of ecological rangelands.