خلاصة:
In recent years, large rangeland areas have been destroyed for various reasons, so that its negative impacts on local people's income and sustainable livelihood are become significant. Due to the fact that signs of negative or downward trends in the rangelands condition are being revealed prior to the complete degradation, a study was done to identify these sings and evaluate their importance in Saryqmish rangelands, Marave Tape County, Golestan Province, Iran. Data were gathered using direct and participant observations. Based on rangeland degradation indicators extracted from literature and interviews, a questionnaire was drawn up under which the respondents were asked to rate the importance of rangeland degradation indicators in two different scales: 5-point Likert-type scale and a 20-point scale. The results showed that "vegetation" with 68.9% and 53.3%, and "climate" with 48.9% and 77.8% are known as the indicators with medium and high importance in rangeland degradation, respectively. In other words, exploiters known climate and vegetation more important than other indicators in rangeland degradation. The results indicated that exploiters consider "reducing production plants" and "reduce the number of annual plants and grass" as the first priorities for assessing rangeland degradation Statistical comparison of the rangeland degradation indicators between authorized and unauthorized users pointed out that there were no significant differences between these two groups in assessed rangelands degradation indicators.
ملخص الجهاز:
"ir Desert 21-2 (2016) 105-113 Assessment of Rangeland Degradation Indicators using Exploiters’ View between Authorized and Unauthorized Exploiters (Case Study: Saryqmish Winter Rangelands, Golestan Province, Iran) B.
Rangelands degradation indicators differ from region to region and are mostly in common in cases such as loss of preferred species, vegetation, biodiversity and forage production, and soil erosion and runoff increment (Ahmad et al.
Rangeland degradation indicators such as reduction in vegetation, loss of plant litter, soil erosion, loss of seed banks, changes in species composition and reduction of forage production have reported in some researches (Ahmad et al.
Based on indigenous ecological knowledge of pastoralists, decreasing forage plants and plants primary production, and changing soil color are the main sings of the rangeland degradation (Zhou et al.
The results indicated that authorized exploiters consider "reducing production plants" and "reduce the number of annual plants and grass" as the first priorities for assessing rangeland degradation.
The findings also suggest that indicators "loss of litter", "reduction of shrubs and perennials" and "invasion of non-palatable and poisonous plants" are ranked as the last priority by the respondents to assess rangeland degradation.
The results of this study suggest that the soil indicators "clayey soil" and "soil salination", climatic index "low and high temperatures" and among other criterion "increased risk of pest damage" were ranked as the first priorities to assess rangeland condition.
The results obtained from all exploiters (authorized and unauthorized) indicate that they know climate and vegetation more important than other criteria in the rangeland degradation assessment."