TY - EJOUR
AU - Ariapour, Ali
AU - Ariapour, Ali
AU - Mehrabi, Hamid Reza
PY - 2024
DA - January
TI - Modeling the Limitative Factors of Forage Production Suitability Using GIS (Case Study: Aliabad Rangelands, Lorestan, Iran)
T2 - Journal of Rangeland Science
VL - 3
L1 - https://oiccpress.com/journal-of-rangeland-science/article/modeling-the-limitative-factors-of-forage-production-suitability-using-gis-case-study-aliabad-rangelands-lorestan-iran/
N2 - This research was conducted to identify the limitative factors of forage production suitability in order to achieve the sustainable exploitation of natural ecosystems in Aliabad Watershed in Lorestan in 2013. The field measurements have been done through cutting and weighing method to estimate the forage amount, four-factor method to determine the range condition, trend scale to specify the orientation and appearance, the plant cover percent measurement to categorize the types and desert scroll to separate the land units followed by the classification. At last, all the digital maps of type, orientation, condition and forage production by the help of integration were changed into the final forage production suitability map using specific software ArcGIS 9.3. Results indicate that 6 separated vegetation types have been put in the suitability classes of S1, S2 and S3 for the areas of 972 ha (20.02%), 3478 ha (71.62%) and 406 ha (8.36%), respectively and no part of the given rangelands was placed in non-suitability class (N). Considering the results obtained from final suitability model of range production in this study, it has been found that high slope was the most restricting factor of range suitability. In addition, there were other decreasing factors such as low percentage of vegetation, overgrazing, early grazing, nonconformity of livestock and rangeland balance and changes of ranges into low-yielding dry lands’ farming as well as forage production. It was concluded that the accuracy, simplicity and quickness can be considered as fundamental elements to determine the range suitability using Geographical Information System (GIS) which has been addressed in this study.
IS - 4
PB - OICC Press
KW - GIS. Aliabad, Production, Palatability., Available forage, Proper use factor 
EN -