A Framework to Determine the Land Subsidence Potential (Case Study: Ardebil Plain)

Recently, land subsidence has become one of the serious environmental problems due to increased agricultural and industrial activities. Population growth have caused to groundwater over abstraction and land subsidence in some parts of country such as Ardabil plain. Therefore, identifying, control and management of high potential subsidence areas may help to better understand this complex phenomenon and avoiding the possible damages. In this research, a new framework suggested using seven effective parameters on subsidence to determine areas that are vulnerable to land subsidence and its capability is evaluated in Ardabil plain aquifer. In this framework seven effective parameters on land subsidence including groundwater level decline, aquifer media, recharge, pumping, land use, alluvium thickness and fault are prepared in raster layer format and weights and rates assigned for layers to calculate Subsidence Potential Index (SPI). The SPI for Ardabil plain aquifer was obtained from 80 to 154. According to inherently uncertainty of the assigned weights by expert, genetic algorithm adopted to optimize given weights. The results were compared with subsidence value obtained from radar images and it indicated that optimized framework have relatively better results. The southern and southeastern parts of the Plain shows higher SPI.