Designing indicators for assessing the sustainability of nomadic rangelands in Fars province (Cases of study: Robat Sarvestan, Namdan Eqlid, Dogush Khonj)

One of the common and growing perspectives on achieving sustainability is to formulate its indicators based on local data alongside with a guided and experimental approach. On this basis, designing and prioritization of rangeland sustainability indicators from the experts perspectives in the nomadic rangelands of Kham Namdan in Eghlid county, Robat Sarvestan and Dogush Naderi of Khanj county were done. These three regions were considered as the representatives of seasonal nomadic rangelands, cold, temperate and warm, of Fars province, respectively. In this study, multivariate decision-making methods, fuzzy Delphi, hierarchical analysis (AHP) and TOPSIS method were used. The questionnaire criteria were divided into four categoris: climate and meteorology, crop production, soil and anthropogenic. Analysis of the results at the level of indices showed that anthropogenic and soil indices with a weight of 0.480 and 0.330 were the highest, respectively, and crop production and climate and hydrological indices with relative weights of 0.134 and 0.056 were fallen in the next rank. At the level of options or criteria, all unapproved options were related to the anthropogenic index, while in the indicators of climate and hydrology, crop production and soil, all options were approved by experts. Paired comparison of the options also shows that the options of income and capital, ownership and types of visible soil erosion with relative weights of 0.16, 0.13 and 0.11 have the highest priority. On the contrary, for drought index, average annual temperature and access to alternative forage with relative weights less than 0.005 have the lowest priority. The results of TOPSIS method showed that options: finance (income, savings, loans and insurance), ownership (land, livestock, housing and car) and types of erosion are superior to other options.