Land Use Optimization of Watershed for Soil Erosion Minimization Using Linear Programming (a Case Study of Brimvand Watershed, Kermanshah Province)

Improper management of watershed land utilization has many ill effects on the available resources. Land use optimization is one of the proper strategies to achieve sustainable development and to reduce resource dissipation. Focusing on Brimvand watershed in Kermanshah province which comprises an area of 9572 ha, the present study was conducted to find out the most suitable land allocation to different land uses viz. garden, irrigated farming, dry farming and rangeland to achieve soil erosion minimization and benefit maximization. The soil erosion, net benefit and standard land capability maps were supposed as the inputs of the objective functions and to defined constraints. The multi-objective linear problem was then solved using simplex method with the help of ADBASE software package and ultimately the optimal solution was gained. Additionally, the results of the study revealed that the amount of soil erosion could reduce by 7.78% whereas the benefit increases at the rate of 118.62%, in case of implementation of optimal solution. The above mentioned optimization led to dry farming decrease and garden increase over that area. The results of sensitivity analysis also showed that objective functions were strongly susceptible to the variation of maximum constraint of irrigated farming and garden areas.