Desertification Monitoring in Garmsar plain with Emphasis on Water and Agriculture Criteria

In management, the monitoring means systematic collection and storage of data from activities and strategies that provide assessment and report about the overall condition of the study area. In this research, among different existing methods, IMDPA model was selected for monitoring desertification in Garmsar plain. Based on the study area two criteria including agriculture and water were selected as the main effective criteria on ​​desertification and desertification intensity was evaluated on the basis of seven indices including: groundwater table fluctuation, electrical conductivity, sodium absorption ratio, agricultural mention cropping pattern, agriculture yield according to land suitability, irrigation method and highly inappropriate utilization of machinery, fertilizer and pesticide chemicals. The results showed that the average weights of agriculture criterion were 2.17 and 2.27 in 2002 and 2011 respectively classified in medium class of desertification. Also, the index of irrigation method classified in very high class of desertification was the most effective factor on land degradation among studied indices in during 2002-2011. Studying the average weight of numerical value, it is distinguished that the intensity of desertification for the total area were 1.93 and 2.10 in 2002 and 2011 respectively.