investigation of socio- cultural drivers of desertification and land degradation in the sistan region, the southeast of iran

This paper investigates the societal drivers of land degradation and desertification in sistan region in the southeast of iran. some of the recurrent anthropogenic disturbances and societal drivers that specifically contribute to sistan desertification were considered. for this purpose, we have fallowed three step of a survey. questionnaires for each step of surveying of land degradation drivers including: i) collecting overall factors ii) selecting candidate factors in 6 categories and iii) identification and introducing and ranking the priority of factors based on their importance role in desertification statue, were prepared and data were collected in collaboration with managers, experts, and administrators that are related to combating desertification at the provincial level. based on correlation statistics and multivariate analyses, social participation deficit exhibited the highest fraction (20.41%), followed by cultural issues (19.32%), migration and land abandonment (17.36%), knowledge weakness (16.76%), social values (13.12%) and land ownership (13.008 %), respectively. also, more than 18 factors out of 38 resulted as significant in affecting land degradation and desertification in the sistan region. among them, the most important were lack of system for using of local wetland’s goods and services, farrow land cultivation, traditional farming, untrusting to experts knowledge, monoculture of cereals, ignorance to indigenous knowledge. results contribute to the development of a deeper conception among decision makers, experts and regional administrators appropriate tools for assessing the effectiveness of land management practices for contrasting land degradation and desertification.